Silver & Gold
by chezchuckles
Summary: Castle Christmas. Spoilers for current season seven of Castle (but not for tonight's episode in this specific chapter). Each day of the Advent calendar (December 1-25), please expect a chapter to be posted as my gift to you this holiday season, as well as a song from the playlist (youtube: chezchuckles).
1. December 1 - Here on Earth

**Silver and Gold**

**A/N:** This will *not* be in the Advent universe; instead it will be in the current show timeline. Please expect **spoilers **for current season seven of Castle (but not for tonight's episode in this specific chapter). Each day of the Advent calendar (December 1-25), please expect a chapter to be posted as my gift to you this holiday season. (Also, check my youtube account - chezchuckles - or tumblr - writingwell - for the song of the day and the Christmas playlist).

Thank you, so very much, for the wonderful generosity of spirit and the wealth of encouragement you all have been to me._  
_

* * *

_O, to have my life from now on be a poem of new joys.__  
-Walt Whitman_

* * *

_December 1, 2014 - Here on Earth_

Oh, I see the end  
Everyone's waiting for death  
How do you measure its worth?  
Justice delivers its gift here on earth

_-Justice Delivers Its Death, Sufjan Stevens_

* * *

The temperature has fallen all day, raining and miserable, the sun obscured by clouds. Experience has taught Kate Beckett that the first Monday back from Thanksgiving holiday is always like this - too many people made desperate by family and festivity, the worst coming out in them.

December is never kind.

It's so cold out here in the dark. It makes her tired.

Kate pinches the bridge of her nose in a habit she's aware that she's picked up from him, but she unlocks the car and slides behind the wheel, closing her eyes for just a heartbeat. She doesn't want to be here. But where _does _she want to be?

No answer. So she starts the car, puts it into gear, and just - drives.

As if she could drive away from it.

Her neck aches down into her shoulders, the sharp knots under her scapulae. She pushes them into wings against the back of the driver's seat, rolls her head on her neck, but the car is still bitterly cold and her body stays braced against it.

The rain starts again, spitting against the windshield, and she flips on the wiper blades, the stutter of rubber against the glass crashing into the adjusts the vent towards her but cool air washes over her face. Flinching, she snaps the heat off, waiting for the engine to warm before she'll try it again.

Her thighs ache at their insertion points, transmitting that dull pain into her pelvis and flaring as high as her ribs. Her body is a bruise, the day is a finger that insistently presses against it.

Her phone vibrates in the cupholder and she glances down, registers the text alert from Castle. She doesn't retrieve it, keeps her gloved hands on the wheel, drags her eyes back to the road ahead until she has a moment.

Until she feels like it.

Until the world stops.

And then she's at a standstill. Literally, traffic has stopped moving, creaking brakes and the fog of exhaust. The rain spits and the plastic parts of her dashboard groan, but the light is green ahead. No one moves. She sees the flash of blue lights but no siren.

She tilts her head against the driver's side window and closes her eyes a moment, flares them open again to check the traffic. Cars gridlocked, not much different than any other rush hour heading home. She should have left the car in the precinct's garage, walked to the subway, toughed out the cold even this late at night.

But she wasn't thinking, and a lonesome walk seemed the worst idea. Mentally.

Finally, the car has begun to lose its sharp edges, the air breathable again. She pulls off the glove on one hand, picks up her phone from the console - an automatic gesture, needing something to do. She finds it in her hand and goes ahead, unlocks the screen and calls him.

"Hey there," he answers. Voice warm, a little tired maybe. Thanksgiving was wonderful, and _full_, in so many ways, and they are both tired.

"Hey, you messaged? I'm in traffic."

"I did. I'm out of tarragon and I'm halfway through dinner prep. Can you stop by and get some? Since you're on your way."

"Tarragon," she says faintly, falls into silence, staring ahead.

"Kate?"

"Right. Yes. You're making dinner?" Not more food. She wants to eat sandwiches for a week. Subsist on coffee.

"Turkey stew; we have leftovers. Needs tarragon. And celery seed, but I'm doing something else for that-"

"Okay," she says quickly, just to cut it off. "Okay, I'll be - however long. Traffic is a mess."

"Thanks. And it's not a huge rush."

He hangs up and she drops her hand to her lap, heavy, stares ahead, the phone a shape against her skin and nothing more.

She blinks, puts on her turn signal to change lanes. If the traffic will open up for her. Might not.

Would be the kind of day she's had.

* * *

Kate has to park somewhere.

This is the worst. Sometimes her love affair with this city feels like an abusive relationship: she's battered and bruised and making excuses for it.

She would hope that after all this time, it would recognize what December does to her, what January nastily promises, and it would give way, turn tender towards her, a free pass just this once.

But, no. She's not going to find a spot. It's impossible. Nothing is convenient, the evening is already dark and cold and raining, and she wants - most of all - to go home.

At least she knows now, doesn't she? Where she wants to be.

So she turns around, starts for home.

The terrible thing - the thing she doesn't want to admit - is that home is a little amorphous right now. When Thanksgiving has gone and faded, home cants towards her apartment with its brick and metal and that painting that's as troubled as her soul. Fortunately, eleven months out of the year _home_ is Castle's loft and that gorgeous, wide-open kitchen and his Boba Fet scaring her in the master bathroom and their sinfully soft, exorbitant-thread count sheets.

Tonight, unfortunately, what calls to her is brick and metal and troubled art.

But she drives to Castle's loft because _that _is their home, and she swipes her card for the underground garage. She parks in the reserved spot that they rent just for the times when she drives the precinct car, and then she gets out, locks it with the key fob, and heads for the outside door rather than the elevator that will lead to the lobby.

_Once more into the breach._

The wind rips the heavy door out of her hands and slams it back again. She manages to escape injury only with her deft maneuvering, rocking on her heeled boots as she sidesteps. She shoves her hands down into her pockets, shoulders drawing in against the misting rain.

She'll walk to the corner store a few blocks down, get his stew spice, and then walk back. She wants to give herself the chance to stew herself, brood in the darkness and the cold wet until she's sick of it, until her own exasperation sloughs it off.

She doesn't like to bring it home with her, this... lack.

She's lacking. Missing pieces. Maybe it was Castle's abduction and two-month disappearance, but she thinks that's only shined a spotlight on what was already disjointed in her.

Her mother's murder is solved; justice rests in the hands of the grand jury who will indict Senator Bracken, and after that, a jury trial of his peers. The evidence is solid and unassailable. She has no concerns. It feels over.

_She_ feels over.

She just got married, for goodness sake, but she feels done. No new doors to open, no great unknowns, no mystery. The winter lays too heavily on her shoulders, cuts into her bones, reminds her that her mom is still _dead _and Kate has rested so much of her life in the hands of blind justice that she's never actually _lived_.

She's been measuring her worth by this one thing - justice - and it's out of her hands completely. It's even been the thing that defined her with Castle and it's done; it's gone. This summer, she traded one consuming passion for another, the woman left behind, repurposed the search for her mother's killer into the search for her fiance, and now that he's back and they're not searching, it's made it so obvious.

She doesn't know what she is any longer. She's not twenty-five and making detective and filled with all this potential; she's thirty-five and staring hard at forty - her _husband _is ten years older than that - and she's seeing the end of things.

She feels like she's read the end of the book.

Hard to see any future when the novel comes to a close. Castle has rewritten her ending, but after the final period-

Kate flinches.

Will their future even happen? If they ever manage it, she's looking at a high risk pregnancy, a greater chance of gestational diabetes and complications, lower quantity and quality of eggs, and what has she been doing with her life but _wasting_ time?

Her hands are shaking in her coat pockets.

She had this plan. She had this plan last year that - that they'd marry in the spring and it would be beautiful and perfect and then she would just stop actively trying to prevent things, let nature take its course, and what with her age and all those other things, just - see what happened. See if it was even possible, really, after everything, to have back what she gave up.

She had this wonderful, hopeful plan, and even though she never said - she has never told him, _hey, let's get pregnant_, it was always in the back of her mind that they would.

She had these dreams for Christmas this year. And then he disappeared.

Well, too bad. That dream is not what winter holds for them.

Really, this might be it. This might just be the rest of their life, and she's going to have to come to terms with it. She has Rick; he's here, he loves her, they're finally married.

That's a pretty beautiful gift this winter. That's more than she could imagine back in the summer, when hope felt impossible to keep.

_Don't get greedy, Kate._

* * *

When she finally walks through the door of the loft, a wave of warm air falls over her, tightens the skin of her chapped lips. She parts her mouth and inhales the scent of stew simmering on the stove, closing her eyes.

"Oh, finally," Castle says.

Her eyes snap open in time to see him come for her at the door - come for the spice in the bag dangling from her fingers. But he ducks in and pecks her cheek, turns away again for the kitchen before she can touch him.

He tosses off his gratitude as he goes. "You're golden, Kate. Thanks."

She's left empty-handed at the front door, and she gazes after him for a long moment before she can find it in herself to move.

She slowly unwinds the scarf from her neck and watches the end trail across the wooden floor._ Holidays and spices._ She thumbs the wooden toggle of her wool coat and works it free, hands drifting up to unbutton the rest. _A quick trip to the grocery store._

"Kate?"

She glances up. Castle stands in the middle of the kitchen with the open spice container poised above his concoction, and he's frowning at her.

"Yeah?" she asks, bewildered by her own her thoughts. They spill out before she can stop them. "You know you had Nikki Heat going for spices when her mother was murdered. Phone call in the spice aisle."

His eyebrow goes up. "I - yes. I did." Hesitation makes his face fluid, like there's not a good mask for this. "Were you just thinking about that?"

"Maybe so," she murmurs. She shakes her head. "Did you need something?"

He smiles now, back at ease, knowing this one. "You think black pepper will be too overpowering in this?"

She opens her mouth in a kind of helpless way, fingers still on the top toggle of her coat, unable to move forward or back. Black pepper and she was thinking maybe she'd find him bleeding out in the kitchen? - was that it?

"To replace the celery seed I don't have."

"I could have bought celery seed too," she says, frowning back at him.

Is this their life? Is this it? He sees only what he wants to see.

"No, it's okay. But come taste-test this when you've settled. Let me know."

She nods absently and shrugs off the coat, moves to hang it up, her mind snagged by dinner, pulled out of the cold. Finally beginning to settle.

When she comes into the kitchen, Castle reaches out a hand and tugs on her hip, bringing her up against him. His one-armed hug is loose and familiar, and she takes a breath of him.

Turkey and carrots and potatoes - that's all she smells, but it's pretty good.

His hand brings up a wooden spoon, his mouth opening as if waiting for her to follow his lead. She mimics, and the spoon touches her bottom lip, allowing her to swallow some of the stew he's made.

"Just fine," she pronounces. Turkey stew. It will work; she doesn't know what else to say. She wishes she had taken her shoes off; the boots are pinching her toes and she's as tall as he is like this. Equal.

"Too bland?"

She starts to shake her head but she stops, finally meets his eyes.

He looks sad.

She bites her bottom lip, wonders if he knows anyway, what she's been thinking, what hasn't happened, what has. What they've missed out on.

They're missing out.

"Kate?"

She nods fast, rubs her knuckle under her eye but it's dry. Her chest is tight and closing in on her lungs.

"Black pepper it is, then," he murmurs. "Spice it up."

"Yeah. Sure. That will do it."

The spoon goes back into the stew simmering on the stove and she watches his body move as he reaches for the spice rack. His shoulders are so broad, flexing under that green plaid shirt she loves the best.

She gives in and cants into his back, laying her cheek to the top of his shoulder. Castle goes still and waits there, and she closes her eyes a moment, trying to breathe past it.

Neither of them have said a word about what they don't talk about.

He takes in a breath she can feel.

"Kate? Forget the black pepper. What about jalapeños?"

She straightens up and he turns around, a hopeful crookedness to his smile. She gives a weak one back, eyebrow raising. "Jalapeños?"

He waits, but his hand comes to her hip, his thumb stroking the skin just over the waistband of her slacks, like he knows without her having to speak a word. He knows they're not getting that Christmas dream, not this year. Maybe not for a while.

Maybe not ever.

"A whole bunch of 'em. Come on, Kate. Let's live a little. Turkey leftovers are so boring. Let's see what happens."

"Okay," she says softly. "Let's do it. Burn our mouths off."

He grins, darts forward to land a swift, hard kiss to her lips. When he pulls back, he lifts his hand to her face and skims imaginary hair back behind her ear, tucking into place what's already in place.

"Go change, Kate. I'll have it ready in a few minutes."

They don't even need to talk. It'll all settle out.

It's just the darkness and a winter's rain.

* * *

After dinner, she takes a hot shower to complement the burn in her lips and across her tongue, hoping to scald out the melancholy as well. When she jumps out, the bathroom is nicely humid, keeping her warm, and she dries off, pads nude to the vanity to gather her lotion.

She rubs it into her legs with Castle in and out, haunting her nightly routine with these flickering looks. She eyes him back as he strips for his own shower, making promises without words. He winks when he steps into the stall, and she finds herself smiling.

It feels like the first smile in hours, muscles unused, and that's a little pathetic of her.

While he's in the shower, she goes into the bedroom to wait on him in a simple t-shirt, rubbing chaptstick into her lips, letting herself get a little lost in the sensation, skin both flushed and rapidly cooling in the dark room. She goes hunting for that NYPD sweatshirt he stole from the locker room for her once, searching through their closet amid the piles of clothes from her place that never got put away.

She has to get on her knees before the big bureau at the back, his efficient closet organization system great if they actually kept track of things. She tugs the bottom drawer open where it was stuck, grunts when she realizes it's filled with a mixture of junk.

No, not junk. She pauses as she spies the box, reaches in cautiously to open the flap.

All the little things from her desk at the precinct when she moved to DC - they didn't get moved back to the 12th with her. Mostly it's handfuls of paper clip chains and sticky notes he wrote that she's saved, the paper football, the baseball signed by Torre that Castle plopped down and they played catch with while trying to puzzle out a case, a string of Mardi Gras beads, the animal eraser he taped to her computer screen.

A lot of goofy Castle. She sorts through the mementos, already forgetting why she never brought them back with her, maybe hoping for new memories to junk up her drawers.

But then she finds it.

She's struck by the incongruity first. It doesn't belong here. It's out of place in their closet, with these things touched by Castle, and it should be in the drawer of her desk inside the 12th. It's a homicide thing, or has become that, and then she's immediately sad that the funny little stick-man that her father made to make her smile that grieving day on the beach has become a _homicide thing_.

Kate reaches for it, closes her fingers around the smooth driftwood. Her dad did this for her back before the drinking, when neither of them really knew what living without mom would be like, when the case was simply a couple of detectives telling them, _we'll do what we can_.

She stands, wanders out of the closet, turning the figure over and over in her fingers as she sinks to the bed. The possibility for joy rests in her very hands.

Castle must be setting a land speed record for that shower, because the water has shut off now and she can hear him whipping the towel off the heating rack.

She waits, the strange doll loose in her hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the doorway until he comes through.

The towel is low on his hips and he brings the humid bath out with him. He sees her first, notes the discovery she's made, but he reaches for his pajama pants and drops the towel with some intention.

"I think I kinda killed the mood, babe," she apologizes. A weak smile. Her fingers fumbling with the wood-stick-man.

He nods. "For now." So hopeful, this one. "Never know."

She waits, watches him dress for bed, run his fingers through his hair, toss the towel back towards the bathroom. It hits the floor and she usually hates that but a weight has settled over her that makes it seem so trivial a thing to care about.

She's sinking in the bell jar, domed under her own circular thoughts. This was the worst day to find the stick figure, a mocking reminder of the things she promised herself back when she was nineteen and deep in grief. Promises for hope, for joy, promises to herself to be more for her mother's sake.

"All right, enough," Castle husks. He comes to stand before her and reaches out, plucks the stick-man from her fingers. She glances up in bewilderment, and he takes her hand where it's empty, draws her to her feet. "Come with me."

"Are we going somewhere?"

"Don't you want to be surprised?"

"Honestly, no."

"Just the office," he smiles, still tugging. "I just got an idea, and you know my ideas are brilliant."

She doesn't remark, just follows after him, through the open door and into his study. The video game controllers are still set up, the television down, an empty glass next to his chair. The warm leather and the spice-scents of lemon and whiskey and books envelop her.

Castle takes her by the hips and nudges her to sit on his desktop, right in the middle of the blotter. A raised eyebrow is what she gets, as if he's asking for her indulgence, and she gestures him to go ahead. Professor time.

She draws her feet up into his chair and props her elbows on her knees, facing the shelves that peer into their bedroom. He has another antique typewriter - he must have gotten that one recently. She's struck by how little she knows about him sometimes, how little he reveals even though he talks nonstop.

"When did you get that?" she nods.

"Been waiting for you to notice," he says easily. A grin that she rolls her eyes at. "Right before Thanksgiving. I won it on ebay; isn't it so cool?"

"So cool," she echoes, finding her lips beginning to curl. He's still got her stick-man in his fingers but he's pulling a book off the shelf. He hides the title from her, and she lets him have his moment, though she thinks it's one of her books.

"Seeing this little guy," he starts, waving the stick-man at her. "Reminded me of this guy." The book comes up, warm blue, dark blue binding, but he flashes it too fast for her to read the title.

"We should put him in the shadow box with our shells," she says, half-hearted. She's trying to guess what comes next, what he's looking for from her. She doesn't want to let him down.

"No, actually, I was thinking he's more a winter baby, deserves his own place of honor."

Kate freezes but Castle isn't looking at her; he's flipping through his book looking for something. _Winter baby._ She makes an effort to keep her shoulders straight, feigning a blase countenance she doesn't feel.

"Here it is," he grins, eyes flicking up to catch hers. He hands her the man of driftwood and she closes her fingers around it, careful of her own jumbled emotions.

"Here's what?" she asks, because he wants her to.

"_Poem of Joys_," he husks. His eyes keep drifting to her, over her, and she has to take a mental inventory - but no, she's just in a t-shirt, ill-fitting, she only made welcoming eyes at him in the bathroom as she smoothed lotion over her legs - and yet he's caressing her with every look as if she were naked.

"_Poem of Joys_?"

"Walt Whitman," he says, nodding to the driftwood man, the lonely sticks cobbled together into a squat and low face. _Oh._ The possibility for joy; a poem of joys.

"Clever," she gives him.

His lips quirk, an incline of his head. "Well, Whitman adapted for you."

"Adapted for me," she murmurs. He had a reading a few months ago and she went with him, sat near the back while his rumble sank through the room like low tide, ebbing. He knows what she likes.

"'O my soul supreme,'" he starts softly. "That's you, Kate."

_Me._

"You know such joys - Joys of the free and lonesome heart - the tender, gloomy heart."

"Ouch," she sighs.

His hand comes to her calf, wraps slowly, stroking up and down. "You know the joy of the solitary walk - the spirt bowed yet proud-" His fingers rise to catch her jaw and stroke, and her heart fumbles at the look on his face.

"Castle," she whispers. Her body is electric.

_I sing the body electric._

His fingers are dancing at her neck, to that place under her jaw that makes her eyes want to fall shut. His words go on. "You know the suffering, and the struggle. The agonistic throes, the ecstasies - joys of solemn musings, day or night..."

She chews on the inside of her lip, but his thumb tugs it free. His kiss, when it comes, is soft, light, it holds more words than breath.

"Prophetic joys of better," he incants. "Loftier love's ideals - the Divine Wife - the strong, eternal, perfect-for-me Partner."

She sucks in a breath and pushes her mouth into his, a hand coming up to guide her to him, his cheeks rough where the shave is wearing off. His body is giving off heat, a wall before her, the book of Whitman a hard edge at her shoulder.

He rubs a kiss at her jaw. "Joys all thine own, undying one - joys worthy of you, my soul."

"Rick," she chokes, twining her arms around his neck and drawing into his body. Her legs wrap around his hips and he palms her thigh, his breath harsh.

"Don't be sad, Kate."

"I'm not," she promises. "I won't be."

"'O, soul, while I live, to be the _ruler_ of life - not its slave. To meet life as a powerful conqueror.'" His hand slides up her side to her shoulder, then buries in the hair at her nape. "You are, Kate. We are. Masters of our fate."

"I know," she insists. "I just - need reminders. Like this driftwood figure, like you. Possibilities for joy."

Eager voice, wanting, rasping in her ear: "I want to give you possibilities every day."

Kate closes her eyes, her heart breaking. "I love you."

His arms are tighter, his fingers cupping her skull; he has such leashed power in his body that sometimes it sends a skitter of thrills up her spine.

"I know the holidays make it harder," he says. "But we can do this. We just _live_ the life we want. 'Joys all our own, undying.'"

She nods against his neck, pulls back to find the book that's catching her in the shoulder. His finger is holding his place and she takes it from him, skims her eyes over the lengthy poem of joys.

"I think your adaption has strayed," she laughs. She has to laugh; she's going to break apart if he keeps quoting Whitman, if poetry is how he pushes through to meet her. His own novels are enough sly seduction, though she doesn't think she can stand to read Nikki Heat for a season. "Strayed quite a lot. But I love it."

"Only where necessary," he rumbles. Oh, _her _soul, that husk in his voice and how his hands grip her hips when he wants her so badly he can't speak.

Her gaze falls to the end stanza and she mouths the words to memorize it. No, to _learn _it. To press it into her own soul like a flower in a book, a memorial for today, the first bleak day of December, when her husband sought after her and found her, like no man has ever done.

She closes the book, settles it carefully on the desk beside her. Castle is all watchful waiting, so she leans in, bracing her arms at his chest to feel the swell of his ribs as he breathes, faintly the tenor of his heart beating below.

Kate lets her cheek skim his on the way to a kiss at his jaw. She pauses at his ear.

"'O, to have my life from now on," she promises, "be a poem of new joys.'"

* * *

_(My hope for you is that each day is a poem of new joys)_


	2. December 2 - Sings A Life

**Silver &amp; Gold**

* * *

_December 2 - Sings A Life_

Every painted line and battered, laddered building in this town  
Sings a life of proud endeavor and the best that man can be.  
Me? I see a city and I hear a million voices -  
Planning, drilling, welding, carrying their fingers to the nub,  
Reaching down into the ground, stretching up into the sky.  
Why? Because they can, they did and do so you and I could live together

_-New York Morning, Elbow_

* * *

Castle slides out of bed early, aware she hasn't slept much, willing to brave the chill in the air and the cold wood floors if it means giving his wife another fifteen minutes.

His wife.

There's his new joy for the day. A giddy thrill shivers down his back and he hops to the rug, toes curling in the deep pile. He rubs his hands briskly over his face to get his blood flowing, pads towards the living room as he shakes off sleep.

The sight that greets him has Castle arrested before the couch, wondering if he's awake at all. The view outside his windows is breath-taking.

Like a proud child, the city presents itself at the wide expanse of glass, the vaunt of apartment buildings and skyscrapers sparkling as the early morning sun catches the delicate lace of frost and ice spanning the horizon. The whole city, encased in ice crystals this morning.

Castle turns and takes it in, the thin expanse of grey-pearled sky and the rows of human construction which fit neatly and impossibly as one created work. Nature has coated the world with ice of her own designs, and even the windows across the street hold their fractals in the glass, throwing back to him the pinks and blues and soft purples of the nudging sunrise.

He senses her before she appears, turns his head to find Kate coming through the office draped in only her loose t-shirt, eyes heavy, lashes clinging together. She steps up at his back to drop her chin to the top of his shoulder, breath warm at his neck, cold fingers tucking into the waistband of his pajama pants.

"The bridges must be awful," Kate murmurs.

"Possibilities," he sighs back, lifting his hand to soften the scold. _Let's find the joy in it, Kate._ He catches the side of her neck and scratches his fingers up into her hair before she can close off with the sting. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

He can feel her swallow, swallow the rebuke and reminder, though he wishes it were easier.

"It is beautiful," she says quietly. Her arm slides through his, hanging on. "Watching the sun rise with you."

"Tongues of light along the ice," he adds, pointing towards the apartment across the street.

"Hmm."

"Look what the city can do if you give it a chance."

Her breath is shaky and he didn't mean for that, but he cups the side of her face and turns his head to kiss the corner of her mouth, support and apology. "Sit. I'll make coffee."

"Sit?"

He nudges her towards the windowsill, untangling himself from her, and she goes, sinking first to one knee and then all the way. He can see her press her cheek to the cold glass, see the individual lashes catching on the window as she stares down into the street.

Castle pulls out the French press, puts the kettle on to boil their water. Kate looks tired and forlorn as he goes through the motions, and they're trying, she's trying, but abandonment is abandonment and Kate has never been able to reconcile herself to it. Who would? Who _should_? But he did that to her, abandoned her at the altar the first time, and now, even as husband and wife, they will have to figure out how to live despite it, because of it, with it.

Here's a regular Tuesday morning, let's live it.

"It's quiet down there," she says from the window. Her face turns to him with a kind of strange hope. "Maybe it will be - easier today."

He smiles back at her but they both know there are no promises with her job, with this city. It's beautiful and quiet this morning but it's a gift.

It _is_ a gift. So is the silence as the beans grind and the water boils. So is his wife sitting, waiting for him as she waited two months this summer.

When he finishes concocting her coffee, a hint of ginger in her vanilla, he brings both their mugs over to the window to sit with her. She takes the mug and offers her smile in return and he hopes that some of that loneliness has been broken up, like ice cracking around her soul.

_O my soul_.

He's a man of words and stagecraft, production - the grand gestures, the symbolic acts. But he's discovered that he drops the ball in the day to day. He just doesn't see it, doesn't remind her; he takes her for granted. Last night, he pulled Whitman off the shelf and seduced her with poetry, but it was spur of the moment, an outpouring of this new awareness he's found after being missing for two months. All their usual routines now feel expectant, a wealth of possibilities for their life with every small thing. Each touch of their hands, each interaction fraught with potential.

He still forgets, but sometimes he remembers.

Their life can go an infinite number of directions, iterations laced before his eyes like this morning's spider-webs of frost. A plethora of pathways in the limn of light.

"Rick?"

He jerks his eyes back to her and she smiles, a tilt of her head.

"What were you thinking?" she says softly, her gaze narrowing on his mouth for just a moment.

"Thinking - anything could happen. Anything."

She grins now, her hair falling forward as she glances down into her coffee mug. "Feels like it this morning, doesn't it?"

"Only this morning?"

She gives a half shrug, glancing back out the window, and her fingers come up to the glass. Must be warm from the mug because steam fogs the window around her skin, a faint after-image of her fingers that makes his stomach flip in the best kind of way.

His wife; they're married. In their home, their first December together. Her image in their home.

"This city just reminds me sometimes, catches me off-guard with it," she starts quietly. "Anything. We can do anything from here, can't we, Castle?"

"You know what I think."

The sun is on her face, yellow and pink, a shine in her eyes as she accepts the morning.

"We're so high up here," she murmurs. "This city. I'm always stuck down there, in the street, the alleys, dead bodies in dumpsters and subway tunnels and squalid little rooms. But up here, ivory tower, isn't it?"

"Ivory Castle?" he offers, smiling.

She hums, laughter - there and gone - though her amusement remains as her eyes roam his face. "Yes. The gilded Castle." She reaches out and touches his cheek. "Golden. You look - happy."

His chest swells and he leans against her palm, touches his lips to hers. "I am. Dead bodies in squalid little rooms even."

"How romantic," she whispers, eyes brimming with all that morning light, laughing at him.

He kisses her again, tasting ginger and vanilla.

She curls her fingers behind his ear and strokes the hair at his nape. She's opening her mouth to speak when the alarm on her phone goes off from the bedroom, that insistent, braying tone that signals the true beginning to their day.

Kate turns her head with a little sigh, then comes back to kiss him even as she's rising from the window seat. "Time to go. You coming? Anything's possible today, Castle."

"Of course. Wouldn't miss it."

* * *

"I missed it," he whispers.

Kate turns her head to look at him, pulled out of her thoughts, circular though they were, revolving around her casework. Castle is staring off, pensive, his fingers tapping against his lips.

She checks the time and then the date on her computer, but she can't figure out what's supposed to have happened on Tuesday, December 2nd, that he's missed. She casts her mind back through their personal history, the last five years of murders and mayhem and mischief, but even then-

"Hey, come with me," he says suddenly, turning those blue eyes her way. She's caught, as she always is, by the tractor beam pull of his excitement. "Time for a break; grab your coat."

Her first instinct is to deny him; perhaps it's just a long-ingrained habit, though her sense of work ethic kicks in as well, roots her in her desk chair. It's already bad enough that her partner - _husband _\- sits right at her desk and distracts her all day, and with no active case, but to give in to his whims and prove them all right-

"Up, up, Kate," he says, already on his feet. "Five minutes."

"My coffee mug is full," she says, but she's rising from her chair and reaching for her coat.

"Not coffee." He has her coat, slides it up her arms, brushes his hands across her shoulders. "Just - outside."

"Tongues of light," she murmurs, turning her head to the windows. But the sun has already set; looks like they just missed it. _Oh_. That's what they've missed.

"Tongues of light? That's downright poetic, Kate."

She chuckles, eyes darting to his. "You said it this morning, Rick. You forget that soon? Man, that's some amnesia."

"Not funny," he grumps, but slides his fingers down her arm to take her hand. "Well, even so, let's go look for tongues of light."

When they step onto the elevator, Castle leans forward to jab the button for the lobby, but Kate snatches his hand back. "Something better," she promises, and shifts in front of the panel, her back to it, her body blocking her movements from his view.

She presses the button awkwardly, not able to look, her eyes teasing his as he narrows his gaze at her.

Castle stalks forward as if he'll challenge, and that wonderful delicious thrill jolts through her at his feint of aggression. The elevator car lurches and his eyes cast up as if he can see through the ceiling towards their destination.

"Up?" he says.

"You'll see," she gives, waiting with her back to the panel to keep their destination hidden for as long as possible. When the elevator doors open, she gestures for him to go ahead of her and then she follows.

The elevator opens up onto a short, damp-feeling hallway, the air crisp up here, the chill touching deeply even through her coat. Kate takes his arm, tugging him towards the far end and the steel-reinforced door.

"The roof?" he guesses, dutifully following her.

She has to use her ID badge on the panel to unlock it, and the door releases with a pop. Kate pushes her shoulder into it and steps out onto the roof.

"Whoa, it's freezing up here," Castle mutters, coming out at her back, crowding. Always talking.

The wind is fierce this high up, and he's right - the brutal cold stuns the senses. But when they struggle past the heating unit and maintenance storage shed, the sky opens before them and takes all their breath.

"Wow," she gasps.

With Castle at her back to cut the wind, Kate can comb her hair out of her eyes and see the full vision of the heavens. The setting sun has leaked light out into the sky so that the night is blended into a green-blue twilight.

"What's this one?" she murmurs, turning her head only slightly so Castle can hear her.

"What's what?" he breathes. He has a fistful of her coat at the back, as if to keep her close, but she wouldn't dare move.

"If the sunrise was tongues of light, what's the twilight?"

"I don't even know," he says. "Just - you can see the moon. And a star."

It's only five o'clock, but he's right. The waxing bulge of the moon has tucked her round belly into the blanket of twilight, a silver in the green-tinged dark blue of almost-night. A lone, burning light just to one side has her wondering if it's more planet than star, but she figures Castle would have told her if it was.

Kate turns her body into his, his fist still at her back, and she slides her arms inside his coat and drops her chin on his shoulder. He watches the sky at her back and she does the same for him, covering the whole sphere of the heavens.

"Joy?" he murmurs.

"Joy," she confirms, turning in to softly brush a kiss at his ear.


	3. December 3 - Love It or Leave It

December 3 - Love It or Leave It

* * *

No one can save you from Christmases past  
You'll have to love it or leave it at last

_Lumberjack Christmas - Sufjan Stevens_

* * *

Castle meets her at the body, bringing coffee that he leaves with LT just outside the door. He's pretty sure LT is taking swigs of his, but it'll have to do. He's on a mission this morning, and coffee at the crime scene is part of their tradition.

Just a smile, all he's asking.

Kate is crouched over the dead woman sprawled at the foot of a chair, a rather more contorted body than they're used to seeing, legs akimbo, arms twisted, like she was thrown there by a clumsy giant.

"What've we got?" he asks, chipper to counteract the definite non-chipper glare coming from Beckett.

She doesn't even answer him. It's Espo that fills him in. Name, rank, serial number. "Paramedics called to the scene of a domestic disturbance," he finishes. "She lives with her daughter. Daughter's enroute-"

A choked sob has them all going still. Castle turns to see a girl being caged at the doorway - a _girl_ \- only fifteen or so, and then he watches as all his hard work this morning crumbles away in Kate.

She sets her jaw and pushes forward, heading for the teenager who was called away from school for this, the daughter falling apart in the doorway. Before Kate can go past him, Castle takes her by the elbow, wants just a moment-

"Don't," she says tersely. Her eyes cut to his and back to the girl again; he can see her bright agony surfacing. "Don't, Castle. There are no possibilities here. None."

He releases her because she's not to be trifled with, because she's not fine but she's okay, and this is her job. What she's been molded and formed to do after years of her own grief - a daughter's grief.

Castle doesn't turn around when he hears her greet the girl, just lets his eyes rove over the woman, dead in a graceless heap. He wonders if Kate is right, if there's no room for joy at all in this place.

As he turns to join her, to face it, he realizes the apartment is half-decorated for the holidays, a few boxes open and still burgeoning, items apparently skimmed off the top to festoon the mantel, the coffee table, the kitchen bar.

A stocking with the girl's name stitched into the white cuff: _Rebecca_. Hand-made, the whole thing, and now the mother is gone. Just like that.

He wonders what small gifts the woman has hiding away in her closet and when Rebecca might see them, if ever, if ever she can bring herself to go through her mother's things after this.

He sees the whole story of her future, but Kate is right. For _this_ day, the one they are in right now, the possibility has shrunk to nothing.

* * *

"You want to talk about it?" he says quietly, standing close.

Kate gives him a look, steps away from him to sit on top of her desk, staring at the murderboard.

Okay. She doesn't want to talk about it.

They're waiting on Perlmutter's preliminary autopsy report; they've reached a dead end on the details of this woman's life. This is the part of casework he doesn't relish, the drudgery, the phone calls and follow-ups just to turn around and cross something off the list, no closer really, but eliminating all the rest of the clutter.

Castle sits down beside her, watches the slant of afternoon light across the white board, the too few marks delineating this dead woman's life. Her timeline is sparse, the morning barely begun, her night before so quiet and uneventful, mostly spent with the daughter.

What would the marks on his timeline look like? If it were today: _4 a.m. - woke to his wife's nightmare; 5:12 am - made coffee because neither of them were getting back to sleep; 6:32 - got a smile out of her finally; 6:39 - call about a dead body that ruined everything_.

Castle sighs. She's had maybe four hours of sleep and about five cups of coffee and one smile the whole day. His smiles have been the put-upon kind, the will-you-sign-my-book responses, so he's not much help here.

All those Christmas decorations in the dead woman's apartment. Must have been what did it. The girl coming home. "Can't escape the past, can you?" he murmurs.

"The past?"

"Christmases past," he says, wishing, too late, that he hadn't said it.

"This isn't about my mom," Kate says stiffly.

Castle turns his head to look at her and she's got her jaw set, eyes on the board, so he makes no comment. And then even his silence seems rather condemning, so he stands up.

"More coffee?"

She looks at him then, chin coming up so she can meet his eyes. "Please."

"Coming right up." He leaves her alone with her bare timeline because he knows sometimes that's just how it is.

Another time maybe.

* * *

He's sitting in his chair listening to Esposito read back their notes from door-to-door interviews when Kate's desk phone rings. She holds a finger up to her boys and answers with that sharp, "Beckett."

She sinks down to listen, starts jotting notes on her yellow legal pad, the receiver cradled against her ear. Castle leans in from his position, torques his neck to read her handwriting.

Yeah, it's almost impossible. She has the worst penmanship when she's going fast. Looks like her mother's, actually. Those calendar entries, the notes on her court files - he can see the same haste in Kate's own hand. He can see where she starts making her own shorthand, just like her mother, and that's a sobering thought.

"Oh, are you sure about-"

He lifts his head to her, but Kate is cut off, apparently, because she looks chastened. Listens again.

"No, yes. I know you wouldn't be calling unless you were sure," she says finally. "Thank you, Perlmutter."

She hangs up the phone with a set to her jaw, stands up. She reaches out and takes the dead woman's photo from the white board.

Turns. Pinches the clip with her thumb and forefinger and the photo releases into her other hand.

"Not a homicide." She has a narrow look to her face that he doesn't like. "Heart attack. I'm going to get a box from evidence. Close it up."

He watches her go, his eyes following her movement, the clipped stride - until Ryan smacks him in the back of the head.

"Ow," he yelps, turns to the man. "What was that for?"

"Go after her."

Esposito gives him death eyes too, so Castle stands up, avoids both of the detectives, skirting the aisle until he's out of their reach.

This is probably for nothing. She's just getting a box.

* * *

When the door swings shut, he still can't see her and now there's even less light in the room. She didn't turn on the overhead?

He steps around the collection of various boxes and storage items; the paper boxes they use to pack away the cases when they're closed are all in here. They call it Evidence, but really it's just storage. It's where Alexis did her time as a volunteer.

"Kate?"

"Here."

He orients to her voice, as he always has, and heads around the long aisle to find her slumped against a shelving unit. She doesn't even straighten up, just lobs the empty box in her hands towards him - which he catches like a champ.

"So," he says. "Not a homicide?"

"No," she says, gets her elbows on the shelf to push off. "Just - Perlmutter theorizes that she was standing on that chair, had a heart attack, fell, hit her head and that's what broke her neck. No foul play."

"Rebecca know?"

"I'll have to tell her. She's with Child Services."

Ouch. "You okay?"

"I'll be fine."

She's determined; he'll give her that. Direct approach isn't the way to go with Beckett and her emotions. She's thinking about her mom and Christmases they don't get to have, and how that's done now; it's closed. It's different, having the case be done and the guy under house arrest, awaiting prosecution. Makes everything different.

So he tries something else. "When I was seven, my mother was in a version of the Nutcracker-"

"A version?" Kate says, her head turning to him. Curiosity. Distraction works every time.

"It was not the original," he says, shuddering.

Her lips press together, that not-a-smile smile.

"I was forced to endure two or three rehearsals a week, every single practice, and so by opening night, I was climbing the walls."

"Hmm, seven year old Rick. Interesting."

He catches that flicker, sends it back to her. That's what they've been doing these days, oblique references to what they want, where they used to be. Today's dreams are different, through no fault of his own, or hers - just different.

"But just in the nick of time, I was saved. My mother's second husband came back from - whatever business trip he'd been on - and he took me to Central Park instead."

Kate straightens up. "Second.. really?"

"Yeah - oh, I'm sure you've heard Mother talk about him?"

She looks intrigued; he's certain his mother has made mention of the man, time to time, but perhaps Kate has never delved too far into Martha Rodgers's backstory.

"Well, so Wayne takes me-"

"Wayne. _Wayne?_"

"Oh, you know him?"

"No, I don't know him. I'd remember a guy named _Wayne_." She bumps his shoulder with hers, eyes glittering. "Wayne. Seriously, Castle."

"Seriously." He shakes his head. "Anyway. He took me to Central Park for the whole day. Mostly let me run around inside the Natural History Museum. I wasn't much an outside kid. And when we went back to my mother's place, it was dark and cold and he made this disgusted noise the moment we turned on the lights. He wasn't there much, from what I remember."

"How... long were they married?"

"About eight months," he admits. "Maybe they were already divorced by then, come to think of it. The point is - he turned on all the lights and was trying to find dinner or something. Just - kids can always tell when adults are put out. So I was in my room, trying not to be as annoying as I knew I must be, and he came back there to say - I don't know what. Dinner or something. But he saw my room."

Kate is facing him now, her eyes searching his, looking for clues like she does. He's got the box down at his side, hanging on to it by the attached lid, and she slides right in against him, arms coming loosely around his neck. "Your room?" she nudges.

"I had bought a huge package of pipe cleaners - all kinds of colors - and I'd made - uh - this is beginning to sound stupid before it even comes out of my mouth-"

She touches her fingers to his lips, shakes her head. "No censoring. Tell me."

"I did it every year. I made my GI Joes into Santa and his elves. I fashioned hats out of pipe cleaners, had them set up all around my room. Wrote stories about these top secret toy runs - something was always exploding or a stuffed animal was dying."

"Aww," she laughs, her lips curling up, so inviting. "That's a little bit adorable, Castle."

"I beg to differ. I think it was mostly pathetic. He thought so too. Wayne made that same disgusted noise and grabbed my coat off the floor, threw it at me and said, 'We're going out.' He took me down to the hardware store a few blocks over. Bought a bunch of cheap Christmas decorations and did the whole apartment. A surprise for Mother. She cried."

"Real tears," Kate sighs. Because she already knows his mother, she knows the kind of mother Martha is and how she feels no less than any others but maybe expresses it differently. And he is so grateful that she gets it, because it has taken him decades to come this place.

"Crocodile tears," he admits. "I was both proud and mortified."

"I bet you were," she smiles. Her body is loose and warm now, the tension melted off like snow in the afternoon sun. She steps closer and tightens her arms around his neck, lays her cheek against his. "And - I bet this is your subtle way of saying it's time to decorate our place?"

"Our place," he murmurs, mouth turning up.

She's grinning too - he can _feel _it, her hips bumping his as she shifts closer.

"Wasn't trying to drop hints," he promises. Just cheer her up about Christmases past.

"Think you were. And you're right. But - not tonight. Tomorrow?"

"Sure. Hit you all at once - like ripping off the band-aid? Or should I pull out a few boxes at a time, go slow?"

She chuckles, fingers slinking in under the collar of his shirt, playing at his nape. "I'm good with either."

"Right." He doesn't believe that.

She tilts her head, nips his earlobe with her teeth. "You taught me just how good it is - going slow."

Castle grunts, fingers clutching at her hip bones, the box falling from his other hand as he raises it. He pulls her in against him by the shoulders, impossibly closer, and she laughs finally, a delicate and fragile sound but definitely there.

"Fast is good too," he growls in her hair.

She twines her arms around him, hugs him. Hard. "You've taught me a lot of things are good, Castle. You know that, right?"

He returns her fierce embrace, feeling her ribs shift. "I know. Same for me."

"Now let me go. I have to find Rebecca, explain about her mother."

He releases her as she's asked, steps back so she can too. Her eyes are reluctant.

"Glass of wine when you get home," he promises.

"Make it hot chocolate and a box of Christmas decorations. Not the life-size nutcrackers."

He laughs then, buoyed, and leans over to pick up the evidence box.

They leave the storage room together, hand in hand, even though Ryan and Esposito are both snickering.


	4. December 4 - Once

_December 4 - Once_

* * *

So for once in my life  
let me get what I want  
Lord knows it would be the first time

-Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want, Slow Moving Millie

* * *

Kate finds herself awake before the dawn, her eyes open and fixed to the ceiling as she watches the somber light begin to crawl through the room. The day is too overcast to show any sun, and the grey is soft and silent, faintly respectful.

Kate turns on her side, the view out the window before her now. Dull buildings, not even frost this morning to combat the gloom, but she doesn't mind.

The tree is up; she counts that as a win.

It's not quite fully decorated because Alexis never made it over, but sometime this week, and then at least there will be that. Kate wonders about Rebecca, the newly-orphaned daughter, if the girl will get stuck like she did, if Christmas decorations will always be a reminder of what's missing, of the lack.

Of course, Castle was right. The lonely tree makes it feel _worse_ rather than better. She should have let him put everything up at once, just bombarded them in Christmas cheer, gotten a little drunk on the mulled wine and ignored the ache until tinsel and spirits made it numb enough to pretend it wasn't even real.

It's barely six, and she's been awake too long. That's all.

Kate pushes back the covers and slides out of bed, turning her face from the grey sky. Every year, winter drags at her. She needs a good relentless snowstorm to drive out the dreariness, a blustery and combative day to revive her. Battle the elements, triumph victorious.

The unending chill isn't even bracing, just draining.

Kate rubs her hands over her arms and pads quietly into the bathroom, pushing through the crack in the open door to slip inside. It's dark in here, womblike, the heated tile warming her toes.

She steps forward and a twisted form hulks out of the darkness, making her yell, startling backwards, slamming her spine into the door.

Kate slaps her hand at the light switch and the whole scene is illuminated, brilliant warm glow spilling across the floor - and the life-sized nutcracker leering at her from his sentry point beside the shower stall.

"Castle!" she yells, turning on the spot and yanking open the door, her heart still pounding.

He's already bolt upright in bed, his face ashen, feet tangled in the covers as he tries to come awake. "Kate," he croaks, "What's wrong?"

"What's _wrong?" _She snatches the pillow off the bed and slaps him in the chest with it. "You-"

Castle catches it, yanks her down, more alert than she expected, and she falls into his chest, cushioned by the pillow between them.

"Your heart is racing," he husks, and then he laughs. Laughs hard, getting breathless with it. Kate yanks her pillow out and slaps at him again, and he ducks, falling back against the mattress even as he guffaws. "The nutcracker. Oh, I forgot."

"You're such a child," she mutters, rolling off of him to give him another whop with the pillow. His arm snakes out and snags her around the hip, drags her back to him.

"I thought you were used to Boba Fet in there-"

"Yes, _him _I'm used to. Boba Fet wears a helmet and you can't even see his face. That guy-" she jerks her thumb to the bathroom "-is grinning like a fool and uses his mouth to break men's bones-"

"Well, you're a little melodramatic-"

"-_plus_ he has a beard," she finishes, elbowing him to make her escape. Where's that pillow?

Castle grunts but doesn't let go, gripping her tighter against him. "What've you got against beards?"

"Nothing. Just means his shape is all wrong. You practically gave me a heart attack, Rick Castle."

"Well worth it."

She stops struggling, suddenly worn out, but all that dreary bleak feeling of this morning is gone. She dips her cheek to his shoulder and sighs, relaxing into him.

"Wish I could've seen your face," he whispers into the top of her head.

"You do know I'm getting you back for this."

"I know," he hums, sounding like he _relishes_ it.

And of course he does. Trust Rick Castle to gleefully look forward to retribution. And anyway, it did to her exactly what she needed, didn't it?

Jolted her out of the grey day.

Kate draws her arm in to dance her fingers over his ribs and down to the hem of his t-shirt, sliding under. Castle makes a noise in his chest that vibrates under her ear and sends an answering hum through her bones. She finds his warm bare skin with her fingertips and skims across his hipbone to the waistband of his plaid pants.

And then she smacks him in the face with a pillow.

He yelps and grabs for it, she ducks away, but he's wrestling her back down. She gets flipped, so she twines her legs around his, gets back on top, scrambling for another pillow. He gets one first and she's totally blindsided by a thwack to her shoulder; they're laughing, breathless, panting, struggling for control of the fight.

Castle's arm tightens around her shoulders and he rolls over on top of her, his eyes practically silver in the clear winter light.

"You know this only encourages me," he murmurs, dipping his mouth to touch hers.

The pillow falls from her fingers.

She lifts her neck to meet him, silent agreement, and slides her hands to his back to pull him closer.

Castle grunts into her mouth and bites her bottom lip.

"Good morning," she gasps, pressing her body up into his, so grateful.

"I'm ordering _all _the life-sized Christmas decorations I can find," he growls. "Santa, his reindeer, the whole nativity-"

She laughs and hooks her leg around his, flips him to his back. "For that, I'm on top."


	5. December 5 - Dreams Around You

_December 5 - Dreams Around You_

* * *

'You took my dreams from me when I first found you.'

'I kept them with me, babe. I put them with my own. Can't make it all alone. I've built my dreams around you.'

-Fairytale of NY, The Pogues (duet)

* * *

"I'm freezing," she mutters.

"This was your grand idea," he mutters back.

They are surrounded by avid Christmas shoppers and eager artisans, open booths and makeshift tent-structures, the flood of holiday spirit sweeping through Bryant Park. Winter Village, it's called, though all he can see is commercialism.

It's a little depressing, actually.

"The tree-lighting is supposed to be worth it," she sighs.

"I'm willing," he reminds her. She cut out of work early for this, her idea entirely, and he wasn't about to say no. She looks as put out by the place as he is, none of it measuring up to childhood memories. He's found that happening more and more lately, even with more recent memories from Alexis's childhood, when his adult eyes would have been presumably more reliable.

Of course, being a kid filters everything. But Castle has discovered that having a kid with you in her wide-eyed wonder keeps the rose-colored glasses firmly in place. With Alexis here, Winter Park was always such a joy-filled treat.

"It'd be different with a little one," he sighs. "They think everything is new. And amazing. The most beautiful thing they've ever seen."

Kate's hand twitches in his and he glances over at her, picking up on a current he didn't realize has been there. For a while now. For... how long?

"Kate?"

"Probably," she says, a little clipped, her head turning away.

What's this about? It's not just Christmas.

He surveys the park once more, the open-air vendors mixing with the more permanent structures, the crush of people, the ice-skating rink in the distance. The huge, decorated tree will be lit in a few minutes and the crowd formed hours ago to get the best spots. He and Kate camped out before the railing themselves, hand in hand, slowly soaked by the cold drizzle.

Kate sighs and leans her cheek against his shoulder, despite being in brown boots that put her height nearly even with his. He turns and kisses the top of her head, damp hair and all, squeezing her hand, trying to be encouraging.

Once the night settles, the tree will flare to life and it will be better. Some of the true magic will shine through again.

Whatever he said, or whatever it was that snagged her dark mood, that too will fade with time.

He trusts that.

He trusts them.

* * *

The subway car rattles as it takes the turn of the track and Kate sways against the pole. They've been standing for the last three hours, so of course all the lines are full, not an inch of space in any single car. It's so crowded that her coat is beginning to steam dry, the damp places itching against her skin.

The metro slides into the next station, another platform groaning with people trying to escape home.

"Well, that was kind of a dud," she grimaces. Castle is giving her a sidelong look that says he agrees but doesn't want to hurt her feelings.

Her idea.

But the night isn't over, not yet. Doesn't have to be over.

On a whim, Kate grabs him by the hand and pulls him off the car the second the doors open. He's dragged with her but she feels him keeping her pace, not even hesitating.

_If you're stubborn enough to keep going, I'm stupid enough to follow._

Something like that, yeah. She isn't ready to let go of the day. Joy hasn't shown up, and she's still looking. Her dogged stubbornness can be useful for something.

Castle takes the stairs with her, racing the sluggish escalator, their hands still clinging together despite the crowd. When she gets to the tunnel leading to the surface, she almost hesitates, the wind whipping down so bitterly cold that it makes her cheeks burn.

But Castle is right at her back and pushing her forward and so she goes, climbing the second flight of stairs up into the misty city.

_Don't fail me now._

The underground releases them, disgorged with a knot of people being spewed from the belly of the beast, and Castle's hand tightens around hers, his quick breathing right at her ear, trying to keep close enough that they won't be separated.

"Where to now?" he says, a faint eagerness in his voice.

"The Old Haunt," she says, turning her cheek. He's closer than she expected and she kisses him harder than she intended, teeth catching the corner of his mouth. "Come on. I want a drink to warm me up."

"Me too," he says heartily, and now that he knows where they're going, he's practically leading the way.

Usually, Kate tries to avoid bars during the holiday season, because of her family history, but this is different. Castle wouldn't let her get that far - he's so easy-going that sometimes she forgets that he does, definitely, definitively have a line. And when that line is crossed, he's resolute. Nothing budges Castle.

He wouldn't let her cross that line; it would be impossible to do herself damage with him standing right there. He lets her inflict some harm, mostly because he knows her, how she pays her penance, but there's always that line and he doesn't brook any arguments.

When she was going blind after her sniper, he shut her out of his life to wake her up. And so yeah, it took hanging off a roof ledge - alone, hopeless - to rip off those blinders, but it's always his voice she responds to.

"Come on, Kate, you're slacking the pace," he grumbles.

She picks up her feet and they're practically jogging, hand in hand as the rainy wind slips along their exposed skin. They're only a few blocks away, and with every _don't walk _sign they encounter, pausing on the corner becomes a kind of game, their shoulders bumping through thick coats, their eyes meeting and electricity sparking, judging the distance, timing the light, beating out the flashing yellow. Mind meld stuff, and it sends thrills down her spine to combat the chill.

When they finally arrive, the Old Haunt is packed, the doors spilling with people. If he wasn't the owner, there wouldn't be space for them. As it is, they've got to push their way through the crowd, bumping and being bumped, the smell of hops and alcohol, wood-grain and lemon polish so seeped into the air that just a breath of it makes her smile. The crowd is so dense that their voices are a buzzing white noise, cheerfulness the default setting.

Castle tugs her to the bar and holds up two fingers to the guy manning a seltzer spray, gets a nod in return. To make room, Kate presses her body to his back, the chilled wool of his coat making her shiver. Castle half-turns and slides his arm around her waist, lands a kiss at the corner of her eye.

"Love you, Kate."

She smiles over at him, twining her arm in his, finding the belt loops of his jeans with her fingers, twisting to keep a grip on him. "There's some 'new' and 'amazing' for you - but you can't bring a kid here, can you?"

His smile grows curious but he doesn't ask, just reaches out and takes a glass from the bar, hands it over to her. "Here. Salut."

"Cheers," she grins. He takes a healthy swallow and she does too, the dark beer tightening her taste buds. Castle's place always has good stuff on tap. Expensive stuff. "Mm, good."

"Does the job," he grumbles. His voice grows richer with a little alcohol backing it up. Kate keeps close to him and takes another swallow, licking her lips of the foam.

"What'd you do with Alexis when she was little?" she asks, jumping right into it. Stupid to bring it up, to ask-

"What do you mean, do with her?"

"Together. What'd you guys do together, those old traditions?"

"That she now disdains," Castle murmurs, lifting an eyebrow at her. "That what you mean?"

Kate sighs, nudges her nose into his shoulder. "Not how I meant it. If you asked, I bet Alexis would. I just want to know what - what your family is like, what you're like as a dad. On Christmas."

Castle grows still and she's suddenly so glad they're here in the noisy crowd of his bar, beers between them, because this has turned a lot more serious than she meant.

"What you were like," she amends, but her chest tightens as she says it, and even the correction is too revealing because he's _still_ a father, even if his daughter is grown. Even if his only child still hasn't made it back to the loft to decorate the tree with them.

Even if Kate's not a mother.

"I guess I was a big kid," he mumbles. He takes another swallow of his beer and she can practically hear it go down. "I love Christmas. I know it's just another reminder for you, but I-"

"I really do want to know. Why I asked. Tell me the good stories." She knows that, as he talks, she'll be trying to resurrect the dreams they had, the visions they created together for their future. In Alexis's place will be a little boy as wonder-filled as her husband, same joy on his face, and if it tortures her now, then maybe she deserves it.

Maybe she needs to be tortured over the future rather than the past. At least the future can be changed.

"Nah," he says instead. "Let's just drink a beer and enjoy the music."

Music.

Kate lifts her head and realizes that the fiddle isn't from a track on a jukebox, but live at the back of the place, a corner cleared out for the band. Irish folk song, a soulful harmonica, the woman crooning into a microphone that sounds muffled and sad. Must be their sound, purposeful, but it lends the whole thing an old world flavor: the music could be just a record player over the speaker system.

Castle takes the beer out of her hand and drags her away from the bar; she's still too surprised to protest. He takes her to the aisle and draws her into his arms, fingers at the small of her back, hand clasped around hers, and he starts to slow dance in the minimal space available.

She hides her smile in his neck and crowds closer, the two of them bumping patrons as they spin an easy, slow circle. People are watching, pointing them out to friends, raising a beer their direction, so she closes her eyes and shuts out the world.

"When Alexis was three," he murmurs in her ear. His lips touch her neck in a gentle kiss before he goes on. "I dressed up as Santa and came in the front door in the full suit and beard, ringing a bell, calling out _ho ho ho." _

Alexis was three. A little girl and her daddy.

"She was terrified. She burst into tears and ran off."

"Oh, no," Kate laughs, a little helpless with the picture he's painted.

"There was just the two of us, and I was trying to make it special for her, our first Christmas alone, and instead I made it worse."

Kate's breath catches; she steps in closer, pressing them chest to chest, her hand squeezing his. She wishes she had known him, somehow, this person she is now to have been able to help him then.

He sighs. "There was no one else, just me. No one to hold her hand and convince her that it was okay, there was nothing to be afraid of. No mother to make her brave."

If they ever make it...

"What did you do?" she whispers. She wonders if he can hear her over the music, over that sad fiddle.

"I stripped it all off right there and kicked it out the front door, and then I went upstairs after her. Found her in the closet with her eyes closed, tears streaking down her face. It was so pathetic it was funny, you know? Somehow. I managed to giggle her out of it, and when she was calm, I put her coat on her and we went out for ice cream. We didn't talk about Santa."

"Does she remember? Did she the next year?"

"Nope, not a bit. But I do."

The failure in his voice is thick and it catches her too. She tightens her arm around his neck and leans in close. She keeps her cheek pressed to his, wanting to speak, not sure she's ready yet to have the words out there.

But she has to. Six months ago, before the accident, she would have. He's told her again and again that the only way to get past the summer is to just _live. _She has to start living.

"But you know better now," she says, feeling her heart pounding as the words leave her.

He chuckles. "Won't make that mistake again."

It's not quite what she meant - or it's exactly what she meant. Hard to know.

But it is a start. They're not back to that easy place where visions come so clear and distinct, where tag-teaming a foundling feels natural and inevitable for them, where _three_ is the question and not _kids_, but she's not sure that place was ever right for them. She's not a senator, he doesn't write pretentious literature, that's not their future anyway.

This. This is richer, right here in his arms inside the Old Haunt, dancing to music no one should dance to, warm with the crowd and his body against hers, each sway a step through unfamiliar land.

Unfamiliar but filled with wonders of its own.

This wouldn't have happened if six months ago, she hadn't come to know how fiercely she needed him, how love could be a taste in her mouth and a rend in her heart, as necessary as breathing. Love had only and always been an effort of work and will, and suddenly it was the thing that subsisted her, that gave her life those two breakingly lonesome months.

No work needed; she only needed him.

She slides her fingers through the hair at his nape and angles her mouth to his, kissing him slowly, out of time with the music, but a rhythm of their own.

All in good time.


	6. December 6 - Hold On to the Day

_December 6 - Hold On To the Day_

* * *

And once you're tucked in bed  
You'll hold on to the day for the last few seconds.  
Your gray dull face is protected from the wind  
And I'll protect you I promise I will  
And the rest of our lives will be just like Christmas  
With fewer toys

-It's Christmas So We'll Stop, Frightened Rabbit

* * *

This. This, he loves:

A languorous Saturday watching tv movies on the leather couch in his office, their fingers laced together and her elbow digging into his thigh, her body warm. He wouldn't move for the world.

The boxes from her old place are still randomly shoved into corners, but she balked at digging into it today, not when they're only halfway through the Christmas decorations (though he hasn't even shown her the two more storage containers down in the basement; he thinks he should let those go and call this a win). Her clothes are in his closet, her jewelry scattered over the dresser she's laid claim to, and the rest of it will find its way into their home.

She smells like cinnamon and coffee. The loft is redolent with the baked potatoes he put in the oven an hour ago, the espresso she made, and the faint flower scent his daughter wears. Alexis showed up earlier for decorating the tree - most of it - and now is gone again, and Castle is content.

"Mm, I could go for popcorn," she murmurs. Her smile is in her voice. She's wriggling back against the couch and her hip bumps his. "Popcorn."

"Is that your way of saying _go make me popcorn, Castle?_"

"I'd probably say _Rick, please_, just to butter you up." She turns her head from the movie to lift her eyebrows comically. "Get it? Butter you up?"

He groans and she laughs, an arm hooking around his neck and her kiss on his cheek.

"See? How bad your puns are."

"See? How _much_ we think alike. I told you."

"The horror, the horror," she quotes, chuckling again, softer now. Her lips are at his earlobe, doing things, wonderful, terrible things.

"You're completely transparent," he murmurs. "Buttering me up."

"We could try real butter," she husks. "Messy but-"

"Oh, no. No. You do not get to say things like that when your sole intention is kicking me off the couch for _popcorn_."

She sighs, a little simpering thing, and he flicks a glance at her face, disconnecting just long enough to get his senses back. Mostly. She's smiling, cat-ate-the-canary, but she rubs her fingers over the material of his shirt, smoothing the wrinkles at his chest.

"Not really sorry, but I'll stop. Go make me popcorn - Rick."

He tries not to laugh, he really does, but he can't help it. She's cute and warm and it's a Saturday off-call and the day has been a revolving door of his family helping out with Christmas decorations, Kate always present in his orbit.

"Fine. Popcorn for the queen of the Castle."

"La-ame," she moans. "You can do better."

He grins and stands up, dumping her legs off his lap, but she just wraps the blanket around her and burrows into his warm spot on the couch. He brushes his fingers through her hair and heads for the kitchen. "I'm making popcorn. But I'm putting chocolate syrup in it."

"Castle!"

Ha. That gets her off the couch and after him.

* * *

His fingers are sticky, his lips. She's licking chocolate sauce from the crease of her thumb's webbing, her eyes lifted to his as he simply watches. Her. Not the television; he has no idea what the Hallmark movie is about any more.

Her feet tuck under his thigh.

He moves the empty bowl to the floor.

She swirls her tongue down to her wrist.

He snags that wrist with a hard grip and pulls even as he stands, yanks her after him towards their bedroom. She's breathless and crowding his back, chasing him down, they are nearly running, hands sticky, the smell of butter and chocolate, too sweet, the taste of her mouth already a sense memory on his tongue.

She kicks shut the bedroom door and jerks, pulling him back to her, the thud of their bodies meeting. Her kiss is fierce, insistent, her tongue and the rock of her hips.

"I love Saturdays," he chokes, grabbing for her wrist again as she speeds things way way up.

"I love _you_," she hums, trying to get at him.

"I can feel," he grunts, gripping both hands now. He has to twist them both around, walk her to the bed with her arms pinned behind her back, her eyes doing the devouring. "You're pretty happy."

She does that lip-bite and eyes-fluttering thing that's half drama and half entirely too real. "Hershey's syrup," she murmurs. "Who knew?"

"Cheaper than that wine," he says. Her knees hit the mattress and they both go down, rather graceless, Kate's body arching into his and rubbing, her movements sinuous rather than frenetic. Just like that wine.

"Different kind of high," she murmurs. "Shut up talking so much and kiss me."

He does, doesn't give up on working at her pants, though her mouth is a special kind of dessert, flavorful and distracting, intimate swirls of her tongue, his body melting into hers.

"I love Saturdays," she sighs at his ear, a little moan.

"I love _you_," he worships.

Nothing can go wrong.

* * *

"Shower in the morning," she mumbles from the cove of his arm.

He hums agreement, the night spread over them, her body perfect curves and lines against his own. It's warm in bed like this, and the love is a thing, a blanket, swaddling them both. Together.

He won't let himself fall asleep. Not just yet. He wants to hold on to this day, to the rightness of it, the _ease_ of it.

Won't come again like this.

The moon is so full, golden and ripe through the window as it sets or rises or one of those, hanging in the city-pinked darkness like an ornament on a low branch, ripe for falling. He blinks to clear his vision, to keep hold of today, to not let it slip away.

They played. They decorated the tree and argued over the star-topper; she and Alexis ganged up against him. There was laughter. A sappy movie that he ignored in favor of her pressed close, loose and simple.

Kate giggled at him today, her eyes lighting up with every tease. Chocolate got smeared on his lips like cutting the cake at a wedding, like they didn't actually get a chance to do until maybe today, as if this was their chance.

And then her body was shivering in the moonlight as he touched his mouth to the best places, faint syrup, the silver line of her waist like the moonrise.

He loves her, fierce love, always love, but days like this where it's a thrumming and blood-pumping thing in his chest reminds him, reminds him. The joy in his heart. To have it outside his body like this, another being in his arms, a woman who could choose another way, a woman with a mind of her own who has challenged and frustrated him, to have his heart walk away from him every morning is almost more than he can fathom.

He is still himself; she is still herself. But this connection brings them back together, stronger, every time. His heart choosing him, despite their frictions, their fights, their problems. Here is his heart.

His arms tighten around her even though she's not going anywhere; he nestles his forehead to the back of her neck, breathes in the scent of her hair. Buttery, sweet, her skin-sweat below that. Just one day like this, all he needs to survive the rest of the year.

Kate rouses, body stirring under his arm, and she turns around, rolling right into his chest. Her eyes flutter open but she can't seem to see him; she's stretching and lengthening against his body, winding an arm around his waist, pressing so close, half-asleep.

"Kate?" he barely breathes. She doesn't move, and now her hair is splayed across his neck and under his chin, at his lips. He has to carefully finger-tease each strand out of his five o'clock shadow; he didn't shave all day.

She's asleep, and he's not; he won't be. He could get up and write - he probably will if the insomnia goes on like this - but for right now, he's tucked in bed with his wife who can still look at him sometimes in that completely unguarded way, just like she did before he disappeared, look at him as if he's some bright and unspeakable joy that she can't yet name.

He's never been that for anyone, not even in the best of times.

He knows he's going to fail - everyone does; they're all human. But today.

Today he got it right without even trying. Effortless. He just loves her and his love is completely, totally, enough.

He's never been that for anyone.

He doesn't mind staying here with her in bed, awake for however long it takes. He'll just watch the moon usher out the last of their Saturday, the night painted gold outside the window.


	7. December 7 - Full Grown

_December 7 - Full Grown_

* * *

The holly and the ivy,  
When they are full grown,  
Of all the trees in the wood,  
The holly bears the crown.

-The Holly and the Ivy, Gibson Bull

* * *

"Castle."

"Um."

"Castle," she snaps. She hears it. She does. She hears how it sounds coming out of her mouth, but her irritation level is pretty high right this moment.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he chants. "One second, Kate."

She crosses her arms over her chest. "Castle."

His head finally turns, snapping, towards her, the controller in his hands, the headset over his ears. He starts fumbling, reaching forward to disconnect, shut down, press pause, whatever it is on that game, and something weird happens to her.

She's nagging.

She's - turned into this?

"No," she says suddenly. "No, I didn't mean you had to stop playing. Castle." She did mean it. But. Now she doesn't. "Play your game. Patel? Is that his name? Beat the pants off him."

"You... mean that? I mean, it's just a video game. I can be done-"

"No," she says, uncrossing her arms. "I was going to ask if you - if you needed anything." It's a really terrible lie, but she should probably get out of the house. "I'm heading to the - drug store."

"You are?"

She is? "Yes. Need some stuff. Vitamin C, all that." Supplies. She really does; it's legitimate. "Your throat sounded rough this morning - you want me to get cough drops or those zinc lozenges?"

He blinks at her. This is - a little surreal - the two of them doing this strange dance.

She waves her hand at him. "Never mind. I'm going. You have fun."

"Okay. Uh. Let me know when you get back?"

"Sure."

She's not the nagging housewife.

She's not.

* * *

When Kate gets back, she comes all the way into the office and combs her hand through his hair. He startles hard and jerks his chin up to look at her.

"I'm back," she laughs softly.

He immediately pauses the game, drops the controller. "I can be done if you-"

"No, I can entertain myself." She holds up the book she found at the drug store. "Got a book."

"Better not be cheating on me with James Patterson."

"Nope," she says brightly, bending down to kiss that wrinkling forehead. "Cheating on you with Jennifer Egan."

He's grinning as she pulls back. "Oh, girl on girl action-"

She pushes her fingers into his temple and knocks him back. "You play with your_self_, Castle, I'll play with this."

"Kinky." But he's reaching for his video game again, his attention split. That's okay. She's got _The Keep_ by Jennifer Egan, a novel about a tower in a castle, and she really can entertain herself.

* * *

Castle comes crawling up the bed, jostling her. Her eyes are slow to lift, reading the next few sentences voraciously, trying to finish the thought.

"Kate," he husks.

_It was one of those views that made you feel like God for a second. The castle walls looked silver under the moon, stretched out over the hill in a wobbly oval the size of a football field. Looking down made something go easier in Danny._

"Kate." He lays down at her side, wrapping an arm around her, and she has to lift the book to keep from losing her place. His chin lands on her shoulder. "Kate."

Her gaze jerks, travels over her shoulder to him. His hair is sticking up, cheeks flushed. "Rick?"

"Did you happen to get those zinc things?" he gruffs. "I feel hoarse."

"You sound hoarse," she murmurs, lifts her fingers to his forehead. His skin is burning. "You have a fever?"

"Maybe?" Slow blink. "No. I'm okay. Video game got intense. I started losing; makes me hot."

She takes one last lingering look at her book, turns down the corner of the page-

"No, don't stop," he rasps. "Just tell me where you put those throat things."

She pauses. "In the bag on the bathroom counter. I haven't put them away yet."

His kiss is rough against the skin of her cheek. "'Kay. Stay. I'm good."

She follows his departure with her eyes, but _The Keep_ is calling her back. Ghost story and mystery, the little drowned girl in a tidal pool, the broken man narrating a life she's not sure is even real.

She vaguely registers Castle rifling through the bag from the drug store, but she's already back in the book.

* * *

When she's forced to, she wanders through the loft with the book in her hands, barely lifting her eyes to watch where she's going, heading for another cup of coffee, or heading for the thermostat to notch up the heat, or heading for an apple so she won't have to stop and eat dinner. Just read.

Her husband is a second presence haunting the loft. Alexis is there at some point, asks what she's reading, Martha makes a comment, they disappear from her radar. Castle stays peripheral when he's never peripheral - outlier and entity, a contrail in the sky of her horizon when usually he's the golden sun.

_He followed Mick through the doorway into a shady passage paved with cobblestones. Inside the castle walls it was almost dark. Danny felt the beginning of fear, that ice in his chest. He touched the knife through his coat. He was sweating. Danny looked at Mick's cashed-out face and felt an ache. All that struggle, all that failure. _

She pulls her knees up in bed, coffee mug against her chest, turns the page, soaking in the story.

At some point, she senses Castle doing something, being - other, but she doesn't pull out enough to know what. Her awareness surfaces every now and again to notice odd details, but her consciousness doesn't put them together: the door closing, Castle coming through to the bathroom, a woman's voice, the television coming on, water running.

Late, too late, no light left in the sky, she lifts her head and realizes her eyes are straining, the bedroom is basically dark, and the bed is heavy and close with body heat.

Castle is asleep beside her.

She folds the book closed around one finger to mark her place, and she lays her hand to the back of his head. He's turned away from her, shoulder hunched in, and he's radiating heat. She skims her fingers to his forehead, pushing back his bangs, and he seems to rouse.

"Rick?"

"Feels good," he sighs.

She trails her fingers over the bone structure of his face, eye socket and cheek, the prominent chin and jaw. "You take anything?"

"Yeah."

"You need anything?"

"No."

"Okay," she whispers.

The day gives up and the room sinks into darkness. She leans over and turns on the bedside lamp, the golden glow spilling around her, but he's still in shadow.

She returns her hand to the top of his head. "If the light bothers you-"

"No," he husks. "It's fine, fine."

"Just let me know," she finishes. She combs her fingers through his hair a moment more, watching him, and he slowly works his shoulders back until he's pressed against her side, spine to her thigh.

She uses one hand to turn the pages, leaves the other to pet her husband, smooth and continuous, the heel of her hand resting behind his ear, fingers over his eyebrow.

_Danny felt the battle in Ann: how much she wanted to please Howard to make up for the stuff with Mick and keep this castle adventure a fun thing for everyone, but also how she knew it was a shitty, stupid idea to go in the tunnels and didn't want to go or let her kid go. But if she stood in the way, Howard would go ahead and have the adventure without her. And she'd be the one who stayed behind._

Sometime during the darkest part of the night, when she's glanced at the clock twenty times and promised herself this is the last page but it never really is, Castle turns in his sleep and curls his arm around her thigh, his face against her hip.

He doesn't wake, but she lifts her hands, waits until he settles, and then she goes back to reading, the book propped on his back, her fingers at his shoulder.

Stroking his ear.

_Ann took Howard's hand. It was incredible - like she'd forgiven him for getting them into this thing, when they weren't even out yet. _

Castle sleeps; she reads until the last chapter is done.


	8. December 8 - Simple Thing

_December 8 - Simple Thing_

* * *

Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?  
Oh simple thing where have you gone?  
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on

-Somewhere Only We Know, Lily Allen

* * *

"How's your throat?" Her voice is husky and warm over the phone, a little distracted.

His throat? Castle pauses halfway through the living room, holding his phone to his ear. But she's at the 12th, at her desk, not in front of him to study her face. "It's fine...?"

"You said last night you felt bad?"

"I did?"

"Hmm, you did."

"How was the book?" He's already picked it up and flipped through it; the first few pages weren't boring exactly, just not gripping.

"Surprisingly good. Castle, you'd like it. It's a ghost story, a horror story."

"What?" He turns around, tempted to go back to the bedroom and pick it up again. "No way. I read the first-"

"Don't let that fool you. It stars off in this Gothic romance setting, I know, but the narrator has this really irreverent and pathetic tone - give it a chance. By the end - wow."

"Really." He's intrigued. He forgets she _reads_. Good stocking stuffer; he'll have to find out if the author has others. "Have you read any Chuck Palahniuk?"

"Other than _Fight Club?"_

"Right," he says, heading for the kitchen again. "Other than the famous one that everybody read to look cool. Which you know I hate. Read for the fun of it, read because it takes you places or answers your heart's deepest questions, don't read because you want to look-"

"Is this going to be an extended diatribe, Castle, because I am at work you know."

"Diatribe. That's hot," he hums. "You left early. Was there a body?"

"Last night. Boys caught it. So I'm running two."

"No diatribe then. Back to Palahniuk. What else of his?"

"Something about a guy flying a plane, trying to kill himself."

"Ah, yes, _Survivor._ Good one. My favorite after _Fight Club._ But I'm asking because I have this other one by him, _Diary_, and it's good. It reminds me of this Egan book you're going on about it."

"You didn't read the Egan book."

"No, but I read a few pages. Enough to know-"

"That's impossible-"

"Hear me out," he says, staring into the fridge, searching for something.

"I'm hearing you. Even if you read the whole first chapter, you have no concept for what this author does by the end when-"

"Spoilers!" he shouts.

"Rick."

"I'll read it this afternoon."

"You have that New Year's press interview thing. You can't read."

"I'll be fast."

"_Diary_?"

"Right. Main character is a woman, an artist who held promise at one point and now she's married and a mother and it just - has fallen apart on her. But the psychological terror in that book-"

"Okay, that sounds interesting."

"See? Told you. I'm good at this."

There's a noise over the line and Castle uses the momentary pause to put his concentration back on what he's doing. Breakfast. He has the New Year's interviews to slug through today; he's got to be extra charming. All of the magazines still want to know what happened to him this summer and it takes effort to divert them.

He wants bacon. He's really craving bacon.

"Rick?"

"That's me."

"I've got to go, but keep thinking books."

"Oh?"

"Mm, I like it when you talk literary to me."

He laughs, pulls out the roll of sausage from the fridge. No bacon. It will have to do. Eggs and sausage. "Love you, Kate."

"Love you, babe. See you at fourish?"

"Maybe six. Not sure about the last session."

"Got it."

She hangs up and he ends the call, absently putting the phone on the counter.

If she likes _Diary_, he'll give her Nick Hornby. Different flavor, but some strangely interesting correlations. After that, well, depends on how this branches out. He could go to David Maine or go back and pick up more classics-

Castle blinks, a roll of plastic-cased sausage in his hands, coming back to the here and now. Breakfast seems so uninteresting when Kate's out there somewhere willing to talk about books.

Books.

No one else talks about books with him.

* * *

When he finally gets back to the loft, Kate's right there to meet him.

"My throat's killing me," he croaks, feeling pitiful.

She strokes her fingers over his neck, along his windpipe. "Sorry."

"Bad day for interviews."

"You feel a little hot," she says, up on her toes to kiss under his jaw. She's been home longer than he has, already out of her work clothes, in jeans now and a loose sweatshirt, some kind of strangely sparkly top underneath.

"I'm always hot."

She rolls her eyes, but her hand comes down to catch his fingers. "Let's go out to eat?"

"Remy's?" he says hopefully.

"Cheeseburger," she answers with a little smile.

"And a milkshake." Mm, he wants a milkshake for his throat.

"Yeah," she murmurs, tugging on his jacket lapels. "You want to change or go sexy?"

He laughs, startled, glances down - gray slacks, the dress shirt, tie stuffed into his coat pocket and the top two buttons undone. It was choking him. "Like this, I suppose."

"Mm, sexy it is." She winks at him. "Let me get my coat."

* * *

Cheeseburger is heaven. Goes down warm and good, flavor-filled, rich. The milkshake adds the sharp, cold kick that soothes the frog in his throat.

Kate sucks salt from her fingers, picks up another french fry, breaks it in half to dip one in the honey mustard smeared at her plate, the other in the ketchup. She puts both in her mouth at the same time.

She fascinates him. Who does that? - Kate does that.

"Nabokov," she answers finally.

"Really? Why?"

"_Lolita_," she nods. "That book was achingly beautiful."

Castle narrows his eyes at her. "It's about a sexual predator."

She bites her bottom lip. "Exactly."

"Okay, you're gonna have to explain because Humbert is a pathetic excuse for a-"

"Sympathetic," she argues. "He's a pedophile, I know. I _know_. Who doesn't know what that book is about? But Nabokov does it anyway. How does he do that - make Humbert into a person? Make me - feel sorry for him. Root for him."

"Honestly, Kate, I don't know. If I did, maybe I'd be writing serious literature instead of a cop with a stripper name."

"Don't do that," she says quietly.

He glances up. She's watching him. "Do what."

"Don't talk about your books like they don't change people's lives."

He doesn't know what to say to that. Change people's lives? That seems so incongruous with the best-sellers he churns out. But Kate. For Kate, his books changed her life, didn't they? If that's all he ever does in his writing life, then it's the Nobel Prize. "Okay."

She nods, goes back to the fries. "You didn't like _Lolita_?"

"I have a daughter."

"Does that make it different?"

"Most definitely."

She rolls the french fry in ketchup. "Okay. Well, what did it for you? Made you hate yourself for loving it."

"Wasn't a book actually. A movie."

"A movie?"

"Yeah." He squints and she smiles in response; the night is golden inside Remy's, untouchable. "It was 'Gladiator'."

"Russell Crowe?"

"Not him specifically, but yes, that movie."

She blinks, evidently not what she was expecting from him. "I... am at a loss."

"It's one of the final scenes, inside the arena, Crowe's character-"

"Maximus."

He lifts an eyebrow. "Why is it hot that you know that?"

"Because you think everything I do is hot."

"Fair point," he concedes, reaching over and stealing her ketchup-soaked fry from her fingers. She flicks at him, nails scratching his knuckles, but he's already got it. "Maximus is inside the arena, in the middle of one of the gladiator contests, and it's been intense and his personal integrity is at stake, plus his life, and as a movie-goer you're just - on the edge of your seat, impressive storytelling, cinematography is gorgeous if stolen straight from the graphic novel-"

"Skip the commentary. And?"

"And you're urging him on, you're in that arena, you're _there_, and suddenly the camera pans the crowd. The cheering spectators. A dizzying circle, 360 around the arena, and back to Maximus, blood-soaked, near-death, and so betrayed by everything he's held sacred."

"Oh. Wow. I see."

Castle nods. "He put me there. He made me one of them. Ridley Scott, the director, has just turned me into a bloodthirsty Roman citizen, cheering for the death match."

"Ouch."

"Yes." He chews her fries with relish. "And that is why I hate that I love that movie. I won't rewatch it. I'm ashamed."

She laughs a little, but he's actually pretty serious about that. And why is this ground they've never covered before? She suggested 'Gladiator' once on movie night and he just said _no_ and they moved on to '300' instead. Why did he never explain?

Why did she never ask? This is first date stuff. But they never really got a first date, did they?

After his disappearance this summer, maybe a few first dates are what they need.

"That's what _Lolita_ does," she says then. She settles her chin in her hand, idly picks up another french fry. She finished her turkey burger long before him, inhaling it. Probably her lunch was half a sandwich from the expensive deli just outside the 12th. Or a salad. Nothing filling.

"Makes you a pedophile?"

"Makes you cheer for him. Side with him. There's a scene I remember really clearly, he's taken his step-daughter on a cross-country tour and it's really gorgeous. Nabokov loved the States, you can really tell it, and so I think that helps you forget too. You get lost in the Grand Canyon and all these great picturesque scenes - it becomes a travelogue. A love letter to the country."

"I don't exactly remember that part, but okay."

"Yeah, well, like you said, you have a daughter. I _was_ a daughter, reading it, only 17 and I guess I dissociated or - the lure of the forbidden. Anyway, this scene. She's been a real nasty brat to Humbert, Lo has, and just so hateful, and he's taken her on this really great trip and tried to keep her mind off her mother's death-"

Kate grinds to a total halt. Castle studies her, waiting for it, and her lips twist, just one corner before it's gone again.

"Kate."

"How did that never hit me before?"

"You said you were seventeen. Hadn't happened to you yet."

She ducks her head, scrapes her hand back through her hair, tugs at her pony tail. She looks young and vulnerable and entirely nymphette, and he really hates that he's used Humbert's word for Lolita now to describe Kate.

Gross.

But that's exactly what Kate is talking about. How it leads you down the primrose path before you even know how deep you are in the thorns.

"She's been a brat," Kate murmurs. "But her mother has died. Of course she's been a brat."

"You weren't then what you are now," he says. "You didn't have that compassion. Or a daughter."

Her eyes flick up and away, gone in the space of a heartbeat. "What was my point? Oh, that scene. No, I had no sympathy for Lo. Humbert was the one wronged. Treated poorly. Miserable over it too, because he felt things deeply, was so sensitive. This is all unconsciously going through my head, and I'm thinking she's an ungrateful little brat, and then Nabokov, this subtle line, and everything is made so horrifyingly clear."

"Do you remember the line?" he husks. He feels like he's walked in on it too, this line, this subtle and horrifyingly clear thing.

"I remember some of it. The way of it." She closes her eyes and paraphrases. "Our long journey was no more than a collection of - places, things, he gives a list of items here, like maybe maps and old books - and so he says their journey was a collection maps, and old books, and her sobs in the night - every night - the moment he feigned sleep."

He sucks in a breath, stunned even by her awkward remembrance.

She swallows. "That's when I remembered what Humbert is doing. _Raping_ her. He's a pedophile and all the beautiful scenery is just camouflage designed to trick you into forgetting that she's sobbing herself to sleep every night after."

"Foreground details," he murmurs. "That's what it's called when he - does that. Slips in this damning information in the background of the other stuff going on. He's an unreliable narrator."

"I have goose bumps," she whispers.

"I really hate that novel."

"I really hate how much I love it."

They fall silent. She's got her chin on the heel of her hand, young and make-up-free but her eyes are tired. She stayed up late last night reading her book. He went to bed early, but he woke a few times with the light in his eyes; she left early to get started on a case they caught over the weekend.

"I wonder how much of my life I've done that," she says then. Her head turns on the pivot of her hand. "Seen but not seen."

"It's a matter of perspective," he shrugs. "The older we get, the more we experience, the more we have to draw on."

"I was seventeen, my mother was alive; I had no idea. Now I do. I think reading _Lolita_ now would break my heart."

"I think so too," he admits. "But maybe it's good you read it before your mom was gone. Fresh eyes. You never had to experience it as an orphan."

"I try to approach a crime scene in the exact opposite way," she murmurs. "I go into it thinking like the daughter of a murdered woman. Is that terrible? Sometimes it feels terrible to call her memory up like that."

"It's terrible," he nods, voice rough. "But only because I love you."

Her eyes jerk to his, like a rock skipping across a lake, jerky and surprisingly graceful. "Why?"

"Why do I love you? Let me count the ways-"

"Shut up," she murmurs, lips curling at the edges. "It's not a bad feeling. I mean, yes, it is. But I think it gives me an edge in this line of work. It means the cases never get stale like that. I don't burn out."

"It fuels you?"

"Yes, exactly."

"I meant it as a question," he says, clearing his throat. "Does it still drive you? Now that Bracken..."

She doesn't move for a moment. This hasn't been a thing they've talked about. It was over, done, she had her victory, even had her moment, and he was there, got to be there for the end. But it's the_ end_. He knows how he feels when he writes the last chapter, how he felt when Storm was gone, and that was just a character in a book.

"I don't know anymore," she croaks, burying her face in her hands.

"Whoa, Kate. Um. Not what I meant to do." He rises out of the booth, slides in beside her, arm around her shoulders and she comes that fast, crashing into his chest. "Don't cry."

"Not," she says roughly.

Barely. He hugs her harder but she's struggling away and he lets her go, doesn't watch as she gets herself back together.

"I'm okay."

"You're always okay."

"Yes. I think you just touched a nerve. I'm still - going through this kind of deconstruction. Dismantling the framework that has been my life for a decade. And now..."

"I know. It's why I asked if it still fuels you," he says weakly, wishing he hadn't. He tries for a laugh. "You know me - I'm all about motive. I dig in where I shouldn't."

She nods, fingers coming to his knee to grip tightly. "Finish your burger. I'm really fine."

He covers her hand with his briefly, stands up and goes back to his side. She has a look on her face Castle chooses to believe is peaceful.

It is, at least, for this moment.

"I don't know what it is, Castle. But it's there, whatever it is, that drive." She reaches across the table, takes his hand. "I'd like to think it's more than my mother's murder - can I not let go and let her rest? I don't know. But maybe it's just you."

"Me?" That doesn't sound like a good idea. He can't be the reason she wakes up in the morning; he's going to fail her. He's him_self. _That's not enough.

"You. I'm _your_ muse, right?" She shrugs. "Maybe you're mine."

Oh. Wow.

He kind of just fell in love with her all over again.


	9. December 9 - Enough to Light the Street

****SPOILERS FOR BAD SANTA****

**A/N**: My timeline is a little skewed, but it's actually going to work pretty well with the events I've already got in play. Assume that the events of last night's episode, 7x10 Bad Santa, occurred in real time (two days was the timeline give by Kate in regards to the poem-writing), and their conversations and dinners of the previous days worked around those events. Castle's 'New Year's interviews' in the previous chapter were actually tying up his mob investigation.

Therefore, Castle has now been kicked out.

* * *

_December 9 - Enough to Light the Street_

* * *

And we've love enough to light the street  
'Cause everybody's here.  
We got open arms for broken hearts  
Like yours my boy, come home again.

-Open Arms, Elbow

* * *

It's completely impromptu, but when Ryan reminds her that they're on-call for this weekend and Lanie mentions she bought a sparkly red dress with nowhere to wear it, it just clicks together. What she can do.

But it has to be tonight.

Kate stands in the middle of the break room with her first mug of non-Castle coffee for the day (eleven in the morning and she's proud she's held out so long), struck dumb by the thought.

Why not? He's been cut off, but it doesn't have to be catastrophic.

She tugs her phone out of her back pocket; she went with the plaid shirt today after Castle wore his this weekend, like a reminder of what they were - easy and natural - and the tail of her shirt is caught by her plucking fingers. She has to set the mug down to unlock her phone, calls his daughter without thinking too long and talking herself out of it.

"Kate? Is everything okay?"

"Oh, yes," she hurries. "Your dad's at home. I should have texted but I wanted to be sure I got you. Exams this week?"

"Yes. Brutal."

"Too brutal for dinner tonight? A come and go thing - everyone."

"Come and - go?" There's a commotion on the other end and Kate realizes she might have plucked Alexis out of class, a phone call from her dad's detective wife being, probably, a cause for alarm rather than plans for family.

Shades of summer.

"Alexis? I'll text you details. Eight tonight. Please, for your dad."

"I - have a study session but I'll-" Alexis sounds baffled, hesitant, but they rubbed shoulders in grief this year, side by side, unspoken. "I'll cut out early. Eight. Anything for dad."

Kate lets out a breath, ends the phone call without saying good-bye. She has some work to do now.

This might be a disaster. Castle has been in absolute no mood for this ever since he told her, _I can't go in with you_.

* * *

Their case falls apart; evidence doesn't jive; she scrapes her hair back from her face and huffs at the white board. Castle would say aliens. Castle would say little green men (though, privately, Kate would correct _little grey men_, to herself, only to herself; some dorkiness isn't spoken aloud inside the 12th) but Castle isn't here.

Nope, it's not a human experiment gone wrong. Though there are disturbing elements that make her stomach churn.

She calls Lanie again for a rundown, has to leave a message, so she tacks the invitation on to the end of it, _something to wear your red dress to._ Jenny is the one who RSVPs for her family, no baby-sitter if Kate's okay with that?, of course she is, of course, though her heart stutters once in her chest.

Esposito finds her in the warehouse as she's making her second round of interviews, pins her down after she's asked the foreman again, repeatedly, _how did you find the body? why were you here on the weekend?_

"I'll make it. This catered or-?"

Catered, she thinks faintly. Oh, no. What is she _serving_?

Espo must see it on her face. "Want me to make something?"

Kate does a doubletake, smooths her face to neutral. "Yes. A vegetable."

"Actually, my granny made this pumpkin stuffing thing-"

Is Javier Esposito actually volunteering to make a complicated side dish? "Yes, that," she says immediately, jumping in with a sudden decision. "Potluck. It's potluck, serve yourself, come and go."

Okay, so now she needs to text everyone all over again and coordinate food. Yikes.

* * *

"Wow, you're home early."

She slides her coat off into his waiting arms, lets him hang it up for her in the closet while she unwinds the scarf from her neck, the scarf she pretty much didn't need, but it was so cold this morning.

"Case is dead in the water until I get more from forensics," she grimaces. "But we're last in line."

"Want me to call the mayor for you?"

"I don't think the mayor is a fan," she huffs, flicks his earlobe as he leans in for a kiss. Her words are smudged by his lips. And then - mmm - his tongue. She drops off speaking for a good long moment, his hands wandering, hers curling at the back of his neck.

"You taste like peanut butter," he murmurs at her cheek.

"I do? Oh, peanut sauce for the chicken from-"

"You went to Bothai without me?" he gasps, putting her away from him. His hair is all disheveled from her fingers; he looks sexy. Dinner with friends and family seems like a really terrible idea right now.

"Um. No?" she lies.

"You did," he mourns, bowing his head to her shoulder. "You know I love their curry."

"I'm sharing now, aren't I?" she chuckles, nipping his ear where he's close.

"Kissing better not be sharing food. That's gross."

She laughs a little harder, steps into him for a hug. Just a hug, the warmth of his arms around her, chest to chest. "Just a taste."

"You're cruel."

"You're melodramatic."

"All true."

"I'm cruel is _true_?"

"Um, let me rephrase that-"

Still hugging. This feels good. She forgot how good this feels, just a hug, an embrace, this man enveloping her. "I missed you today."

"You did not."

"I even suggested alien abduction as a viable theory just to have something of you with me."

"You're lying."

"I'm lying only a little." She smiles over his shoulder.

He releases her then, just like that, hug over by some unspoken communication between them. She heads for the bedroom and to change clothes, he keeps going for the kitchen where he was probably-

"Wait! Castle, hang on." She comes racing back through the office with her shirt halfway off and he lifts an eyebrow from the kitchen sink where he's already gotten vegetables out to wash.

"That hot for me?" he says, smirking. "I knew you couldn't resist, but Beckett, it's-"

"Stuff it," she laughs, sliding the rest of the way out of her shirt. "Don't make food. No dinner."

"We went out last night and you said not twice in a row on a week-"

"Don't make dinner, Castle."

"But those are _your_ rules-"

"What did I say?" she growls, picking up the throw pillow and doing what it was made for. It falls short, bad aim as goose bumps race across her bare arms, and he laughs, ducking even as the pillow never makes it.

"But I'm starving. I was waiting on you, stuck at home all day-"

"No dinner, Richard Castle."

"Am I being sent to my room on top of being grounded from the 12th?"

For a breathless moment, the space between heartbeats, she both finds him completely, frustratingly impossible and also so violently, shamelessly _hot_ that her hands go to her bra and work the clasp.

"Am I being sent to my room?" he yelps. Eager, dropping a bell pepper into the sink.

"Yes, you are." No, no, no. Thirty minutes. They have _thirty minutes_ before she has to really start pulling this together, but oh boy.

Here he comes. Stalking across the room, shirt untucked from his jeans, hasn't shaved all day because he's been writing, _writing_, they talked about books all night last night after the office party, even in bed when they got home, endlessly comparing lists and themes and _what gets you, Kate? what does it for you?_ and he probably sat at the laptop this afternoon and tried to recreate it in Nikki, what gets her, tried to write for her, and _oof_-

"Castle," she gasps, laughing as he lifts her up off her feet, arms around her, hauling her backwards. She's going to fall, they won't make it- "Couch, couch-"

"Office couch, I love the sound of your skin against the leather-"

"Oh, _hell_," she husks, trying to wind her limbs around him so she won't be dropped.

"I'm on to you," he hums, his face at her neck, mouth going down, down, down. Her back hits the side of the shelves, bumping, his apology a muffled sound at her chest. "So on to you."

"On me? Oh yes-"

His chuckle is a thousand tickling sparks of pleasure, her stomach quivering.

"I know what you're doing. Trying to cheer me up. Prove it's not so bad. Everyone's coming to dinner?"

They fall to the couch, graceless, his hand already going for her pants, her hands at his, switching jobs when their eyes meet with laughter.

"Hurry," she murmurs. "Everyone gets here at eight."

"Plenty of time-"

"I have to make the main dish."

He pauses, fingers gripping the waistband of her underwear, that close, so close-

"What's the main dish, Kate?"

"I don't know yet. I don't even know what we have."

"Oh, you are so screwed."

"I am _trying_ to be," she mutters, lifting her hips to remind him.

"It'll take-"

"Castle." She snaps her fingers in his face. "Focus." He's male - why is he distracted so quickly? She's _dying_ for him to-

"Right," he says, eyes tripping down her mostly exposed body. "Oh, I love this pair." Fingers turn gentle, stroking her hip.

"You're killing me here. It's not even your turn."

"Not my turn? This feels like my turn."

"For the nutcracker in the bathroom." Why are they _talking_ so much? He just doesn't shut up. "Castle, put your mouth to better use, would you?"

Oh, that did it. Oh, yes.

"Rick," she whispers, eyes closing.

"Yeah?" His head lifts, eyes wicked.

"No, no," she protests, fingers tugging. "Just - appreciating this beautiful moment. Don't let me stop you, babe. Possibilities for joy, all that."

His chuckle makes her fall apart.

* * *

It's like they have a secret.

Electricity zips between them all night, a tether that tugs and sparks whether close or far. She finds her lips turning into a smile when her eyes catch him talking loudly, boisterously, with Jenny and Sarah Grace. The baby girl naturally adores him, her eyes tracking his gestures, enthralled with this man.

Of course, of course.

Kate's heart is crackling with too much energy to twist, too much love to feel overlooked. Either by Castle or by the feckless universe for their twists of fate.

Esposito arrives late but with his promised dish, Lanie is already here and mashing potatoes at the stove. The two of them touch and flirt, hesitation in their glances - there must be more going on, must be plans in their heads they won't yet confirm. Ryan isn't on the outskirts though; he's right up there with them, drink in his hand, a little oblivious to whatever currents pass through the waters.

Currents in her body too, connecting her to Castle, connecting Castle to her. Tugs and pulls, heartstrings, gut checks, her cheeks flaming up bright when Martha makes a comment that isn't even meant to be dirty.

Alexis gets there right as they're sitting down. Everyone stands back up. His daughter waves them off, pours a glass of wine that Lanie takes out of her hands, sips herself, puts it at her own place. Alexis looks flustered for only a moment, Castle says something that makes them all laugh.

Alexis is a junior in college this year; she turned twenty-one when they weren't looking. Castle fills her glass himself and hands it to her, the red wine sloshing, but Kate notices that Alexis barely sips at it.

The table is set, all Martha's stagecraft, last minute elegance. Holly berries and scattered pine needles, plain thin red ribbon on the backs of the chairs. Something pagan about it that stirs Kate's blood, makes her lips close on whatever wants out.

Castle sits at the head, Martha at the foot, Kate at his left hand side, Alexis the right, their friends branching from there. A pictorial last supper, though Castle holds her hand and a whisper of _grace_ goes across the table, maybe it was Ryan and Jenny, maybe it was their collective thankfulness reaching a cumulative sigh of _I can't believe we made it here._

Even if all the pieces aren't quite in place, here they are.

His fingers lace through hers and squeeze, she has flashes of what they did on his couch just hours ago; he must as well because his head turns to her and his eyes are blue and clear and knowing.

"Pass the chicken," he says, not at all what she thought he would say, but she has to let go of his hand to do it.

The conversation is wide-ranging: the Stoppard play (something in Castle's face twitches), Alexis's room mate (_her _face twitches, Castle asks, _Charlie really is a girl, right?)_, Lanie's fake ring (Espo's face doesn't twitch and they all see the nothing), Sarah Grace's latest milestone (no twitches, except the baby to her name, and she beams a beautiful smile that they all relax into).

Sarah Grace is using the high chair that Castle bought for Cosmo; she's a little big for it, but she fits, and they never even used it - the baby was bottle-fed, their night was too long, he wouldn't have been secure anyway.

Castle's knee presses hers under the table. She glances over at him.

_This?_ he seems to be asking.

She opens her mouth - what is she going to say, what words will come out? She doesn't know, and he never finds out either, because Alexis laughs and his attention is drawn to his only daughter as she offers to hold Sarah Grace, the two of them now, and all that expectation and mild curiosity and love is transferred to the young woman holding the baby. That might be Alexis in a few years.

And then to Lanie and Esposito, who are getting looks from Kevin and Jenny and even _Martha_, but no one is looking at her and Castle for that. No one.

"Kate?"

She turns her head to him, but she's got no answer.

"More chicken?" he asks.

Kate sits up straighter, passes the chicken around for second helpings, allows Castle's natural exuberance to unthread her usual reserve, her personality spooling out into the night with his chuckling, garrulous tugs of affection.

Not this, no. But something that feels a lot like it.


	10. December 10 - I'll Laugh With You

_December 10 - I'll Laugh With You_

* * *

I'll laugh with you till it's Christmas in the room

-Christmas in the Room, Sufjan Stevens

* * *

He hears her voice, feels her fingers, wakes.

She's reluctant and apologetic over him, her mouth forming a kiss he senses rather than knows. A moth at his lips.

"I have a call," she whispers. "I'm sorry."

It takes him a moment to orient, and then the details begin adding up - she's already dressed for work, the air has that faint touch of humidity from her shower, the scent of her shampoo and the light fragrance of lotion drifts down to him. The clock remonstrates with a fiercely red _5:48_.

She's leaving for work. He can't come.

"I need to clean up after the party," he murmurs finally. And he does; he made her stop last night, took the plates out of her hands and dragged her away. "You go."

She smiles, her moth-wings landing between his eyes. "Call you later. Give you all the good details."

She's gone before he realizes he's falling back asleep.

* * *

He's up by eight, the dishes done by nine. The housekeeper came Monday, so it's up to Castle to collect the trash and straighten the furniture. He has to run the vacuum cleaner too, just a few rugs, and then he gathers the trash bags to take downstairs, piling everything up by the front door.

Since he's going, he'll take the recycling too. That's another thirty minutes of picking through the bin and separating stuff out; they just don't have the space to have individual collection bins in the laundry room. Might have to change that, figure out a new system. Kate's good at that kind of thing. Or he can do it - he has the time, now, right?

When Castle has it all bundled and his arms loaded down with trash bags and recycling bags and stacks of newspaper, he barely manages to twist the knob and get the front door open. He's watching his feet as he crosses the threshold, eyeing the door frame to make sure he clears it, so that when the protruding trash bag bumps something in the hall, it doesn't quite register.

Not at first anyway.

He shifts the load in his arms to see what he's gotten caught on, and he's met face to face with a camel.

Castle shrieks and drops everything, trash and newspapers flying, recycling clinking heavily, glass rolling against the parquet floor as he jumps back.

There are three plastic wise men and a camel in the hallway outside the door.

Holy-

"Kate Beckett."

When did she do this? Before she left this morning at five am?

His heart is pounding, trash is strewn at his feet, and a doe-eyed plastic camel watches him serenely, a wise man perched on his hump. The other two are standing in a line, bearing plastic gifts, and they are - all three figures - lit up inside with an ethereal glow.

How in the _world_ did she do this? He's grinning like an idiot as he fumbles in his back pocket for his phone, ignoring the trash on the floor, calling her immediately.

When she answers, he doesn't even say hello. "So what church is missing its wise men from the outdoor nativity?"

She laughs, a wonderful rich sound that melts across the line and settles over his shoulders like a warm blanket. "Mm, you've only discovered the wise men?"

"There are more?"

"Then you must have only gotten to the hall."

"Hang on." He puts her on speaker and slips the phone into the breast pocket of his Oxford shirt, stoops down to collect the bags of trash and the recycling. "I'm taking stuff down to the trash room. So I have to - gather it up again."

"I figured on you taking the trash out sometime today," her voice comes from his pocket.

He gets the load balanced once more, starts down the hall, leaving the three wise men in a line approaching his door, like they bear gifts for the occupants of the loft. When he punches the call button for the elevator, it takes a moment for the car to arrive.

"I don't see anything-"

"Just wait."

The elevator doors open and a beaming, wide-winged angel fills the entire back of the elevator.

"Holy cow. How did you _ever_ manage to get that in here?"

She's chuckling on the phone and he crowds into the elevator with the life-size plastic nativity angel, the wire and gold tinsel halo bobbing as the car descends.

"I am _so _putting this guy in Alexis's room," he crows, a little creeped out by the beatific face. "Wait, is this all?"

"Not quite."

"Did Eduardo help you?"

"He's the one keeping Gabe on the elevator."

Castle laughs, trying to imagine the other apartment dwellers being confronted by the angel as the doors opened. The car pings to announce the basement floor and he steps off, leaving 'Gabe' back behind him. He'll need Eduardo's help to get the angel off the elevator.

"Where are you now?" she asks.

"In the basement."

"Oh, good."

"No, Kate, _you're_ good."

She laughs and he reaches the serpentine hallway that snakes behind the underground garage. It leads to the various units' storage cages, and the trash room lies at the very end.

He passes their own storage, but there's nothing telling, nothing out of place. "Hey, do you have the keys to the storage-"

"I've been filching yours," she says, her voice echoing in the damp concrete.

"I need to make you a copy," he sighs. He should have done that when she officially moved her stuff; they've been carting loads down here off and on all week.

"We'll get there," she murmurs, apology accepted in her voice.

When he makes it to the trash room, he wriggles to pull down his sleeve over his fingers - he really hates touching the trash room door, _hates _taking the trash down here anyway, but he has to because it's too much for the chute and the recycling has to be carried down and sorted, but it is always so bone-chilling and dark down here. There's not a light bulb and the apartment board can't get an electrician in to fix that problem because the wires don't go this far, but he has to just man up - be brave - so Castle opens the door.

A flock of sheep (two) and a shepherd are radiantly beaming light through the whole space. "How?" he gasps. "How are they _lit up_?"

"They're solar powered, and they've been chilling on the roof for a couple days," she laughs. "They're gonna go dark at any second, so I'm _so_ glad you made it in time."

"They'll go dark?" he says nervously.

"You've got maybe an hour. Surely we don't have that much trash."

"No, we're good. Only one trip," he grins. "So - shepherd, sheep, angel, wise men. We got all the attendants. Where's the holy family?"

The phone is instantly quiet. He pauses in his work; the trash bags thud as the arc of his throw lands them into the big bin. He hears something in her silence, preoccupation.

"Kate?"

"Sorry, work. Um. What did you ask?"

"Nothing," he says. He has her attention now. "Kate? Thanks for lighting up my day."

She laughs softly, so much pleased pride in that sound.

"See you later?" she says suddenly into the room. His phone is still in his pocket; it makes it sound like she's hiding behind the shepherd.

"Yeah. I'll see you later, Kate. Now I gotta figure out how to get these guys upstairs."

"Good luck with that."


	11. December 11 - Road Before Us

_December 11 - Road Before Us_

* * *

We're snuggled up together  
Like two birds of a feather would be  
Let's take that road before us

-Sleigh Ride, Shel

* * *

"Mpf," she mutters into the pillow.

Castle rolls over her and snags her phone, answers with, "She'll be there. Text the address." She would be horrified he's answering her phone if she weren't so exhausted.

He hangs up and drops heavily down over her. She loses her breath, grunting, but she doesn't move, too tired to care.

"Body." Castle pokes her sides with his fingers. "Up, up. Get up."

"Too tired," she mumbles. It can't be much more than five in the morning. Her phone vibrates with the text, but she pushes back deeper into Castle's draped body.

"Gonna tickle you." No sooner does he say it than he's actually doing it, fingers on the move, and trapped as she is under him, she can barely get away.

She curses when he hits that one spot, jerks out of bed. She might have elbowed him in the face; he deserves it. That was a low blow.

He's burrowing into the covers. She narrows her eyes at him. "You're not getting up?"

"Oh, no. No more five a.m. wake up calls for me. I have been kicked out." He's snuggling down into her warm spot, cuddling her pillow. She could kill him cheerfully.

Kate mutters under her breath, moving around the bed to head for the bathroom, but at the foot, she pauses. A nasty thought comes into her head.

So mean.

So very cruel.

But she does it anyway.

Kate grips the comforter at the base and yanks it down, uncovering Castle and drawing away all that hoarded warmth. He gasps and sits bolt upright in bed, eyes so blue and startled, like maybe he really had fallen asleep just that fast, and she can't help laughing.

"You're - so mean," he gasps, melodramatic and wide-eyed. He's scrambling for the covers, hunched shoulders, wrapping the whole thing around him like a royal robe. "What was that for?"

"Tickling me."

"It was a warning shot only," he grumbles back, kicking out at her and catching her in the calf as she goes.

"Warning shots aren't supposed to hit their mark," she calls over her shoulder, sailing into the bathroom.

"Warning shots with you require a little more force!"

She flips on the shower and drowns him out, strips off her clothes before she can lose her nerve. She gives the nutcracker standing at attention the evil eye and steps into the shower, goose bumps racing across her skin despite the heated tile.

The water has just gotten hot when, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Castle reach his hand inside - she has that little warning. He flips the water to cold and she shrieks, jumping back out, colliding into his chest, a stupid and insufferable grin spreading his face.

He's chuckling and oh-so-pleased when he kisses her good morning, framing her face with his fingers, his pajamas getting damp where she's pressed against him for warmth.

"For that, you have to make my coffee," she mumbles, lips numbed by him.

"Nope," he grins. "I'm crawling back into bed. You go do work things, bring home the bacon. I got fired."

He puts her back down on her feet - when did she climb him? when the water turned icy? - and he turns around and leaves her there so that he can literally crawl back into bed and bury himself under the covers.

Stupid man.

She's going to miss him at work today.

* * *

She hates this case. Hates. This. Case.

Castle has millions; she could be one of those do-gooders, one of those white whale catchers who attends soirees and galas and donates generously of time and money. Why does she still do this - chase after killers? Why is she even here?

Beckett rolls her head on her neck, mutinous for just one moment, then she gives in and heads over to Esposito's desk to look at the photos again. She pulled back her hair into a knot sometime after the lunch she didn't actually eat, and for some reason the bun aches like a bruise at her spine. She went to bed after midnight, came into the 12th before six for another body drop, and now she's had three twelve hour days in a row.

She wants to just close this case, but the solve is frustratingly out of her reach.

Espo elbows her aside and finds the manila folder with their evidence photos from the crime scene, pushes it into her hands. Kate grimaces and slides the photos out, starts flipping through them.

"Maybe you should get some coffee," Espo says.

Kate blinks, lifts her eyes to the detective. "I should do what?"

"You know..." Espo shrugs, scowling. "Coffee."

Ryan clears his throat, shuffling up to them. "I could use some coffee. You making a coffee run in the break room?"

"No," she says reflexively, glancing between the two of them. Did he say break room extra loudly? "I'm not-"

"She is," Espo nods. "Because it's her turn. I got it last time."

"And I'm the one who got us all a round when we got back from the scene this morning," Ryan adds. "So yeah, your turn, Beckett."

Kate stares at them. She's pretty certain that Ryan did no such thing, although she's not entirely sure if she got her own coffee last or if Espo really did hand her a mug. He does that sometimes, picks up on the things Castle did for her when he was here and slides them in like it's no big deal.

"Okay, fine," she sighs. "I'm getting coffee." She shoves the stack of photos into Espo's chest and turns on her heel for the break room, rolling her eyes.

The blinds are all drawn, every single one across the break room windows - slats turned shut. Huh.

Kate twists the knob - when is the door ever closed? - and pushes inside only to stumble to a halt at the flickering darkness.

"Surprise."

Castle walks towards her with two thin glasses of something bubbly, the lights turned off in the break room and candles lit on every flat surface. He's covered the table with a red-checked cloth and laid out a dinner that smells amazing - and her stomach twists and growls in response.

"Rick," she murmurs, taking the glass from him automatically. "Are you allowed in here?"

"When has that ever stopped me?" He lifts his glass in cheers, but suddenly that's not enough, not nearly enough.

Kate wraps her arms around him, sloshing the champagne a little at his back, but she hangs on to him, burying her nose in his scratchy wool sweater, inhaling the scent of winter woods and cologne and their home.

"Hey there, Kate, you okay?" His free hand comes to cradle her head, lightly scratching at her scalp, combing down her hair to palm her back. "You're not crying, are you?"

She laughs, stepping back, shaking her head. "Not crying. Just - needed this break." She takes a sip of her champagne and finds it's actually sparkling cider - which she can consume on the job without a problem. "Mm, this is perfect."

He grins, lopsided. "It's just Chinese takeout."

"It's dinner, and I think I had a package of peanut M&amp;Ms for lunch and a bag of doritos an hour later."

"That sounds delicious," he grins, taking her hand and leading her towards the table. "But maybe that's just me."

"I think that's just you," she says, settling down in the hard plastic chair of the break room. The break room transformed. "Thank you - for doing this."

"I got bored at home," he shrugs. But it's a big deal. It's thoughtful and Castle isn't always that good at knowing when the thoughtful thing is needed. He ambushes her with thoughtful sometimes, but it's usually in those times when a special occasion is de rigueur. The man knows how to celebrate Valentine's Day in tasteful and expensive fashion; she's looking forward to Christmas even as she dreads it.

But a random day, for no reason? He's sometimes a little too... dense for that.

"The boys help you with this?" she asks, watching him open takeout cartons.

"Just in sneaking me inside and getting you in here."

"They weren't subtle about it," she chuckles.

His eyes lift in acknowledgement, meet hers to share the amusement, and then drift back to the work of opening everything open. The savory scents mingle and spread, filling her breath, and she reaches out to help.

Castle slaps her hands away, and she startles with laughter, their gazes colliding once more.

"You sit, do nothing," he says, poking a finger her direction. "Just veg out and stuff your face."

She blinks at him, a vague surprise curling in her belly.

He smiles. "I know how you get in front of the murder board when it won't speak to you. So let your mind drift, I won't try to talk to you, eat."

"Actually," she says slowly, her hands folded in her lap, "that's Nikki."

"What?"

She swallows and lets her eyes trail off to the closed blinds, the perfect mood, the carefully arranged setting. "That's not me. That's Nikki Heat."

"I... she's based on you."

She flashes him a look and he cringes, and for a second she hates herself for even saying it. But the truth is better, she thinks. "She might be based on - on six years ago me, but now?"

She struggles to find words and Castle sits there with a look of both horror and fascinated revelation.

"But now?" he prompts.

Why is this so uncomfortable? To name it. She _married_ him.

"The white board doesn't speak to me," she refutes. That's Nikki. "You speak to me."

Castle's jaw drops. Literally. She has left him speechless.

"We do it together," she says carefully. "We did..." She knows she slows down when she's flustered, that her words get spaced out. It drives Castle crazy because he's the opposite; he wants information overload, he wants her to just spit it out already.

"We did it together," he prompts.

_Just give me a minute_, she wants to snap. He's always crowding and sometimes she likes it, craves it, but sometimes it's this impediment to clear thinking.

"Kate? I don't-"

"Just - the mind meld, the back and forth, that thing that Lanie finds freaky," she rushes out. Stupid. That sounds so stupid. "We're supposed to do it together. We solve cases together and staring at the white board just makes me crazy."

"Then forget dinner. Let's go out there right now; you fill me in. We'll see what clicks." Castle is jumping up, grabbing for her hand, but she withdraws it, leans away.

If she says to him,_ I know it's late and Gates isn't here and we'd never get caught, but rules are rules, _Castle would be crushed. He's been trying so hard to be good, to not screw this up for her like he did in DC, and she knows that; she can see how much he's been trying.

So she can't say that. She can't tell him to just follow the rules.

She goes at it sideways. "You seriously cannot expect me to walk away from Chinese takeout when I haven't even had lunch."

He laughs, but he's undeterred. "We'll take it with us. I'm _dying_ for a good murder."

They used to do this together - just days ago. And doing it alone feels like regression. Two steps back.

Kate glances over the amazing, delicious food and sighs, snagging two cartons and getting to her feet. "Fine. Have it your way."

"Oh, but it's _your_ way, didn't we just establish that?" He grins and wriggles his eyebrows, gathering three cartons himself, plus two forks. "Not Nikki Heat at all."

"And don't you forget it," she mutters, heading for the door. She yanks it open and at the sound, her two boys' heads lift, little prairie dogs poking their noses up for food. "Have at it, guys. Castle brought a ton."

"Yes!" Ryan and Espo fist bump and hustle forward, maneuvering around Castle as he comes out into the bullpen with her. They move for the white board and the case notes spread across her desk, and Castle takes his chair.

"All is right with the world," she murmurs, sitting down at her own desk and settling the takeout over it.

Castle flashes her a beaming smile, pretty pleased looking, and even if it's not as romantic as candlelight and a surprise picnic in the break room, it's somehow better.

"So what've we got?" he says with relish.

She roves her eyes over the white board. It won't talk to her; the elements don't magically coalesce into some beautiful answer. It's work. Just work. And it's the back and forth that she and Castle do over the difficult cases, building theory in layers until the key turns in the lock and the solution tumbles free.

It's a story and they write it together.

She won't deny either of them the chance tonight. Tomorrow brings problems of its own.


	12. December 12 - And Walk

_December 12 - And Walk_

* * *

We put on our winter skin  
Our winter skin and walk  
And we watch  
the snow fall

-Winter Skin, Jars of Clay

* * *

_**x**_

_Come with me_, she whispers.

He grumbles into the dark pillow, hunches deeper into warmth. She's there anyway, fingers tugging at his ear.

_Rick. This is your friendly four a.m. wake up call. I want you to come with me._

His eyes open and find his wife above him: his wife, that hesitating beauty of her smile.

_Are you awake?_ she whispers.

_-Mm awake._

_Come on, then._

_-Where we going. Not allowed at the 12th._

_You'll see._

**x**

There's fumbling in the dark. There's finding socks deep in the covers, teasing them out. There's the brush of her body as she tries to help him. It's not a murder scene she's calling him out to see.

_-Where we going?_ he murmurs, standing now, swaying with sleep. It's early. The room has a faint chill to it.

_Here's your scarf. Shh, quiet. Quiet._

No lights on, just the glow of the city that never sleeps outside the closed blinds, barely making a dent in all this darkness.

_-My scarf?_

_Shh_, she shushes. Her fingers brush his lips, the scarf winds around his neck. _And your coat._

He finds arms for the sleeves, finds the sleeves for his arms. She's dressing him, and he's stumbling forward. She put the shoes on his feet too and they feel wrong. The tongue has slipped down and wrinkles hard against his bone.

_Shh,_ she murmurs. _Hush, hush. They're both asleep upstairs_.

_-Who - oh, Mother and Alexis. What time is it?_

_Four in the morning,_ she says, like a wince.

_-Are we going somewhere?_

_Yes._

**x**

Outside, he's awake now.

Oh, he's definitely, marvelously awake.

_-Wow._

_I know_, she breathes.

Light, delicate snowflakes fall from the sky. Miniature. Silent. They disappear before touching the ground.

Castle tilts his head back in the middle of the deserted sidewalk and opens his mouth to the snow. Lets it drift onto his tongue.

_It will melt with the dawn_, she murmurs. _I wanted - out in it before that happened._

He brings his chin down, blinking at her. He's bundled up in his coat and gloves and scarf, the good boots on his feet, Kate similarly clad - she did that before she even woke him up, got everything together so they could do this.

-_Let's go_, he says. _Let's - walk in the snow. Walk until it melts._

_Where?_ she smiles. That's a yes.

-_Everywhere. All over._ He shrugs and throws his arms wide to the whole enormous, amazing world. They're still whispering, like they don't want the world to wake up.

_Top five places_, she says in a rush. _Top five places for us._

He grins, arms dropping, reaches out to take her hand. -_Yeah. Top five places for us. Number five?_

She brings in a huge breath, the snow catching in her hair, her eyelashes, melting instantly. It won't stick. It's not even sticking to the cold ground. It's like a silent, wonderful gift, just for them.

_Number Five: the bookstore where we met._

Everything in his heart tumbles over.

_At least_, she whispers, _where I met you._

**x**

The walk is long, on and off the subway to keep warm in between blocks and blocks of snow drifting. That's what he's calling it in his head - snow drifting. The two of them meander in response, watching the way the white filters between the buildings in silence.

They talk sometimes. Neither of them has had coffee, so conversation on her side is one or two words, quick agreement, longer-thought negation, a cluster of words at a time, coming to him just like the snow: quiet, thoughtful, startling.

He gathers new things about her: she likes whales because they travel long distances, because the whole ocean becomes like home to them. She wants a house on the ocean some day, and his in the Hamptons doesn't count. He offers to let her redecorate and she grimaces, so he drops it.

It's not hers; she wants hers. Theirs. Something they build together. He sees that now.

_-I want that too,_ he tells her. A place they build. _Can we look for land somewhere? An older place to renovate maybe. There are some really amazing beach-front homes in Normandy-_

_Later, Castle,_ she says, the echo of her promise bouncing between the buildings. _Let's be here first. Look._

They've arrived. The Strand, of course. All the best chic lit novels start there, don't they? A meet-cute at The Strand. Good thing he doesn't remember theirs; might be too saccharine for words.

For life.

Their life.

They peer in the windows, frosted over with their own breaths, the dark shapes of shelves and tables, displays for the genres. A towering Christmas tree, a blue neon menorah, a rainbow of tribal colors - hitting the highlights of the holidays.

-_Was it like this,_ he murmurs.

_Not at all. It was filled with you._

He shouldn't feel so proud of that, but he does. It's cold out here and the snow flakes are like glitter - like the city is one big holiday display for them.

He takes her hand. -_Number four._

She follows.

**x**

When they come up on Drake's Magic Shop, she turns to look at him, smiles passed between knowing eyes.

-_I have a lot of good memories,_ he shrugs. He spent his childhood dreaming of this place, literally. He remembers actual dreams of all these complicated and amazing magic tricks found inside that he could, of course, already perform flawlessly, and then he would make it here one day after school, finally, and search the shelves for just the thing he dreamed about.

_Me too._ Her smile shows teeth and the snow is still clinging at the collar of her coat. Her hand takes his before the closed door of the shop, and they spend a few moments there, peering in windows again, giving the place its honor.

He finally finds the rest of the words he really meant,_ -And you teased me - that thing about the ice - and then it happened. It happened a lot like I imagined it would but a whole lot better._

She laughs, bright and sudden and nearly too loud in the snow-shrouded pre-dawn.

Worth it.

**x**

_Number three: Comicadia._

His turn to laugh at the delicious thrill in her voice. He nods in agreement, touches his fingertips to the window. The snow has begun to thin, finally, the air touched with light, and inside the comic book store are bright and flashing colors, the images of his own teen-heart's violence and wanting.

Derrick Storm is still standing in the back beside a display. He signed the standee when they came asking after a case; apparently it has its own place of honor. They swap quiet stories about The Flash and Julia Carpenter as Spider Woman and his fascination with the Ultraverse.

And then, Kate tugs on his hand after the requisite moment of silence and they keep walking.

**x**

She's got one snowflake perfect on her shoulder. It stays there, not melting, in an entire crystal fractal pattern. He can see the spokes, the lace, the cut of the clouded frost. It is the stereotypical picture of a snowflake and yet it is a real snowflake at the same time.

He didn't know they actually came down like that, visible to the naked eye.

_Number two, _she hums. She's up on her toes as they cross the broad avenue. _Central Park. All of it._

He smiles, shaking his head at her. -_Belvedere Castle._

_You would say that._

He would. Actually, they walked so close to the Love sculpture just a few blocks over that he had expected her to drag him there, profess some naive and romantic desire to kiss in front of it like models for a magazine photo shoot. But of course not.

He shrugs and she takes his hand, leads him inside the park entrance. Central Park. It's so massive and sprawling and complex that they could spend all their tops here, top hundreds, going over old cases or old memories. He used to hang out here in the summers as a teenager, riding the subway back and forth to nowhere, come back to Central Park with the group and throw things in the Pond, sneak around, make out on the benches. Stupid things. Things they got in trouble for.

_Police horse naked,_ she questions, lifting an eyebrow.

-_Oh, yeah. That too._ He laughs a little but somehow it's not funny. It's - sad. It's kind of really sad, actually, because even those girls he brought back here to make out with, even showing off for the hangers-on that Meredith called their friends, all of it feels stale and trying-too-hard. He was a caricature of a man. The cartoon version of himself.

He used to really enjoy that - the theatre of it. He still dwells in the absurd regions, still finds 'Dumb and Dumber' one of the most groundbreaking comedic genius movies of all time, but the police horse, the puffed-up-prideful attempts to get with some girl, the grandstanding and showing off - smack of desperation.

_I have our number one,_ she says. She must see it on his face, how lacking these memories are beginning to feel. She looks like she wants to help. _ I know where our number one place in the city is._

**x**

She kisses him in the last fall of snow, her fingers around the chain of his swing, so close to him that her foot is hooked around his ankle and he keeps them braced to the ground.

Her mouth is warm and mint-cool, a physical sensation of her love almost exactly - that wonderful paradox, fire and ice - and he draws his arms around her because he doesn't know what else to do with them. His hands are too big for her slim waist, the narrow bones of her shoulders.

Sometimes he holds her and has no idea what he's doing here, how he even got here, how he might possibly manage to stay.

Her kiss begins to taste desperate.

Maybe it's just his.

Maybe it's just the way this playground feels, the echo of memories, how desperate he always is to just hold on to her.

But who could ever hold her?

_I love you for this,_ she husks. _Every one of these memories. I love you for waiting. _A kiss to the corner of his eye, her hands framing his face. _  
_

He kisses her back, hungry with the waiting years, devouring her mouth, her lips, her tongue, her love. -_I'd wait again._

The snow has ceased entirely and the sun has risen.


	13. December 13 - Blanket of Night

_December 13 - Blanket of Night_

* * *

Sowing silver prayers  
In the blanket of night...

The ocean that bears us from our home  
Could save us  
Or take us for it's own  
The danger that life should lead us here  
My angel  
Could I have steered us clear?

-Blanket of Night, Elbow

* * *

_Sea change.|_

The cursor blinks at the end of his two word sentence - the only sentence on his rather blank page - and Castle stares blankly back.

He tries all the old tricks to beat his writer's block: lets his mind wander, switches to a different project for a few minutes, googles the definition, closes his eyes to recreate the last scene. The problem is that the last scene was nothing at all - there is no last scene, this isn't Nikki Heat.

This is his Christmas present to Kate. _The murder board doesn't talk to me._

There are things that need to be said, and he had this brilliant idea that if he could write it down, he could deliver this speech on Christmas Day with her gift, and it would be perfect, but all he's got are two hauntingly sad words.

_Sea change._

From Shakespeare's _The Tempest_, when the spirit Ariel sings about the drowning death of the prince's father. _Suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange_.

But how does that help him? It's all so rich and strange.

"Castle?"

He lifts his head from his laptop, his eyes slow to adjust in the afternoon light. Kate is leaning into the office from the living room, one arm bracing herself on the door frame.

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to unpack stuff. I want to get all of it done."

He nods absently; her face slips into something less pleasing, a little more hard. Her eyes shutter just like that-

_sea change._

And just like that, the words are there.

His hands jump to the keyboard and his eyes pin the page; his fingers race across the keys as the whole messy thing pours out of him, a flood of its own, and he knows this is it, this is how he wins her.

Christmas Day. It's going to be perfect; it's going to clear everything up. It will be his heart.

He vaguely realizes Kate is watching him, but he can't pause or it will be gone. And then she is too, like a slow fade, and it's only him and the words, his eyes burning as he holds his place, his body rigid as it flows, all of it, the whole thing in a torrent of all the words he can never figure out how to say but here, but here, he can make himself understood.

His heart can be known.

* * *

Castle finds her in the upstairs guest room, her arms wrapped around a framed print that she apparently has yet to find a place for. Oh yeah, her stuff from the apartment. He forgot - she said she was doing that. Oops, she might have wanted help.

She doesn't turn when he enters, just stands there staring into the open closet.

"Hanging it up in here?" he remarks. "You know, we could redecorate this room anyway-"

"This was my room. You let me stay here," she interrupts, half turning to him. She looks confused for a moment at seeing him, like she expected someone else. "When my apartment blew up."

"I believe I insisted," he says, softening at the memory.

"Montgomery insisted," she replies, closing off again. "And I didn't have a whole lot of options."

Her arms sag and the print goes as well, the bottom of the frame resting on the ground. It's that crazy frog-fish thing; he doesn't get it, whatever it's supposed to mean, though he understands the appeal. He spent a few days staring it down, trying to master its message but failing.

"I'm glad you stayed," he says finally. "First time I really - got to know you."

"What?" she startles, turning so completely that the print bounces off her hip and starts to pitch forward. He darts in close and saves it with a hand; she grips his shirt instead of the print.

"Kate," he breathes. "Nearly cracked the glass-"

"First time you got to know me? But it'd been years," she says.

He leans the print against the wall and tries to come up with a sentence that won't be painful. _Sea change. _She said it herself in the break room the other day - the Beckett he had met was Nikki Heat, the Kate of now...

"Okay," she says quietly. "I know. I'm not the easiest person to get to know."

He looks back at her when she trails off, her face awash with something he can't understand. He misses how it easy it was with them last weekend, how natural the give and take. "Hey, if you want to wait to finish finding homes for all of your things, we don't have to do it this weekend. It's a beautiful Saturday-"

"It's been raining all day."

He narrows his eyes at her. She doesn't smile. "Kate, rain or shine, we don't have to do this now. And it _can_ be a beautiful Saturday-"

"There are only a few more boxes. I've done most of it alone, so why stop now?"

Oh. Oh, that's directed at him. "Did you want me-"

"No, no. You don't have to help if you're - you know - over it."

Over it? She knows better. "Did I or did I not help you pack everything - without a single complaint that this was the movers job? Not even a crack about how this is what we're paying them for?" He lifts an eyebrow at her.

"You did." She's got a stubborn look on her face, mulish, and he has no idea what he did. "In your own way, you definitely helped."

In his own way. What does that even me? "Look, Kate, I can't read your mind. If I did something, just tell me what it is and I'll try to make it right."

Her jaw works and she flashes him a look and then away again, reaching out for the print. He lets it go, doing his best not to devolve into growling and throwing up his hands, but he's pretty close.

This is such a long way from Friday morning when they hit the highlights of their love story all through the city that he has no quick rebuttal for that look on her face. _Sea change._ He doesn't know what he's done to deserve the attitude, and frankly, he doesn't see how this is his fault.

"I carved my initials into the crossbeam of my old apartment," she says suddenly.

He stares at her for half a beat. "Oh-kay. That's - ah - a neat idea." Which initials - Kate Beckett or Kate Castle?

Well, probably KB right? She identifies herself on the phone as Beckett, she hasn't signed anything other than credit card receipts with his name. She's a Castle when she wants the money, is that it?

_No._

He drops his gaze, feels guts churn with the dishonesty of his thought. He didn't say it, no, but he's ashamed he's got that floating around in his head. It's _not_ true, he knows that, and Kate Beckett is the very last person to be like that. He doesn't know why he's bitter. He's not bitter. Is he?

What is he bitter about?

"My initials were a way to memorialize my time there. Make my mark on it, like it made on me, I guess. It was a good place."

"Yeah, sure," he answers.

"What exactly do you have against it, Castle?" she says sharply. His head comes up, his attention on her now, mouth pursed with the taste of his bitterness.

"Against it? Not - nothing. I just never really loved it."

"But _why_?" she insists, stalking forward. "I put in so much work there."

"You did?" he blurts out, surprised. "I didn't know you did the refurbishing yourself. That makes-"

"No, not - what? Not the apartment's _features_, Rick. I'm talking about me. I worked on _me_ in that place."

"_Oh_." That makes so much more sense. "That's - rather a perspective shift." He tries to grin around it, shaking his head. "Never saw it like that before."

Somehow, though, it makes the bitterness rise in him again. She worked on _her_ there.

"You still look like you've tasted something sour. What's with this face?" she snaps.

"Why does it matter-"

"Because it's my _life_. That apartment was where I did - all of it. After my first place blew up, I had nothing - not just homeless, but _me. _Ashes. I started over in that apartment you're sneering at. I rebuilt myself. Stronger, better, _more._"

"Alone," he injects.

She frowns. "Well, yeah, no one ever got to me there. No one could hurt me there. Felt safe."

"Believe me," he husks. "I know."

Kate actually flinches.

He's said too much. He has _got_ to remember to just shut up, stop talking. He ruins it with words. He has always let his mouth run away with him. That's why he was trying to write it all down.

"Talk about perspective shift," she whispers. "That what this is about?"

Castle risks looking at her. Her face is blank, that scary blank of thinking hard. Sometimes that's good, most times it's bad for the suspect on the other end of the table.

That's him - the suspect at the other end of the table. Guilty for sure.

"You have something to say? Then say it," she tells him. "Don't stop now."

Oh, no. No. Mortal peril lies in opening his mouth.

"Castle, just tell me why. Why you're so - like this."

He feels it welling up in him anyway, wanting out. He's a writer for a _reason_, and if she would just let him sit down and type that speech, he could shape it into the best construct, the best version of himself, the one he wants to be.

The perfect Christmas.

"I love that place for what it stands for," she insists, "but you don't. And it's more than just hearing my neighbor in his bathroom. _Why_?"

His shoulders hunch. "Because that's where - that's where I couldn't get to you. Like you said, no one could get you there."

She's gone still. He can't look.

"I couldn't get through to you," he goes on. "It's the place where we had our worst fights. Where you kicked me out. Where you opened up your window shutters and finally showed me just how deep you were - and it was all my fault. I brought it up again, I pushed you right back into it. The black hole."

"Castle-"

But oh no, he can't stop now. "It's where I couldn't touch you. It's where you hid from me after you were shot and never - never even sent word that you were back in New York, that you'd made it out alive."

"And you're still mad at me?"

"No," he says quickly, eyes coming up to meet hers. He wants that clear at least; her voice is too fragile. "I'm not mad at you, Kate. I'm not picking a fight. You asked for my perspective on your old place. Well, that's what it is to me. The place where you were Kate Beckett, solitary, singular - the place I couldn't go. But it's ancient history. And you're here now. We're here."

"But that ancient history is - our history," she says. "If we can't be at peace about it, celebrate it even, then where does that leave us for the future?"

"Don't get me wrong," he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets to keep from touching. He wants to take her hand and lead her back downstairs where this isn't the conversation they're having. "I can definitely celebrate you not living there. All night if you want."

She rolls her eyes and he takes a deeper breath.

"Kate, that place was sacred. Your space. Not mine, not even ours. You had walls there. Even when we packed your stuff in boxes, you had those walls still."

"But I-"

"Think about it. How long has it taken you to tell me that your apartment was special to you? That you see yourself in it? That I was inconsiderate to not notice?"

She studies him for a moment.

"Two weeks, Kate." He shrugs. "Maybe that's just you, how you'll always be. So, here I am again, scratching and clawing for the least scrap. Here I'll always be, clueless until you clue me in. But don't get mad at me when it takes me some digging."

She turns her face away from him. He waits, because he's used to that when it comes to her.

At least, he has been since the accident. Waiting. It's taken him longer to get back to the heart of her since he blacked out in a car accident and woke up two months later to find a self-contained, bristling woman instead of his bride.

That's it. That's what he's bitter about. _Sea change. _She experienced two months without him, not knowing if he was even alive, if he'd done it on purpose, and she changed.

But he's still here.

Two steps forward, three steps back.

"You're a writer," she says.

And that's the worst of it, isn't it? Now he's just a writer. Solving cases together this fall is what got them back on track at all, and now he's just a writer. "Yeah, I know, Beckett."

"I mean, for a writer, Castle, you are so dense sometimes. I don't - don't understand how you couldn't, just once, put yourself in my shoes and see what that place meant for me. _That _is why it took two weeks, why I didn't spell it out. How can you be the man who seduces me with Whitman, _o my soul_, and also be the man so oblivious?"

"Because I'm just a man," he says bleakly. "I'm not - any special."

And God help him, he's always going to keep coming back to her, trying to read her mind, trying to make it perfect.

But it won't be. And that's not good enough for Kate Beckett.

* * *

He's careful not to leave right after their fight, careful to say the right things and smile in the right places, but they aren't fooling each other. It's not quite right.

He feels heavy.

She goes to bed to read or - something - and he stays in the office and works on the laptop long enough to claim writer's block and a need for fresh air.

He sticks his head in the bedroom and says, _I'm going for a walk._

And then he goes for a walk.

His coat is loose, no scarf; he pushes his hands deeper into his pockets and watches the sidewalk to avoid pedestrians. He thinks about going to 34th and seeing the Christmas displays in the Macy's windows, cheer himself up, but his feet don't take him that way.

He loves her, of course. He's in love with her still, always, that won't turn off. He tried that, right? Didn't work. He doesn't want to turn it off, anyway; he loves her.

She's his wife. He has the enormous honor of being her husband - and that still fills him with pride, swells his chest, makes him light-headed even in the heaviness of his heart. A zap of electricity at thinking that she said once to him _I'm more of a one and done kind of girl, Castle_ and he gets to be that one.

He'll walk home eventually.

But he just - keeps not going back.

He _is_ bitter. And more, the bitterness is a cover for a wound he didn't realize he's had. It's an old instinctive move on his part, to scoff and charm his way through the issue until he's written his way around it.

She changed. Sea change.

But he didn't do anything _wrong_.

She punished him for it, is still punishing him for it, for disappearing. He didn't do it on purpose, leave her at the altar, but he did. He stayed away, for some reason that he still can't comprehend, and shouldn't look into, if all accounts are true.

He stayed away.

_But I came back._

He came back and she was changed.

Everything he wanted for them is gone.

She's here, but everything they were, everything they planned, those half-spoken dreams, the way he could see them five years from now with their own little family-

It's just gone.

She grieved for two months; she put up storm doors at her heart and he's battering still. He opened his eyes for a kiss and got nothing.

Just gone.

He walks for a long time, getting lost, wandering, not finding any answers.

He finds himself at their park. Fitting. The sky is overcast and starless, but the moon must be up there somewhere, casting the clouds in that strange silver light. He wanders through the gate and onto the playground, watching his shadow move as he passes the slide and jungle gym.

Cold out here. The kind that works its way down into his bones. His ears ache back into his head.

He told her they just had to live. Live the life they wanted because it's worth it, and it is. It's _worth _it. He knows that, feels it even, feels it despite the awful not-fight they had tonight, feels how worth it their love is.

Doesn't mean he can't mourn what they've missed.

She would have been a really great mom. He would have liked - he would have liked to have been the one-

Castle sinks down onto the swing and closes his eyes, head bowing forward.

He could use some magic right now.

He could really, really use some magic.

A sign.

It's not enough that he came back, is it? It's not enough.

The chains of the swing creak and he tilts his head back, his eyes closed.

He wants that life with her, the one they hoped for, the one she _could_ hope for.

But he loves this one. He _loves_ this one.

Still, he could really use - something.

Anything.

He wants to believe in all their possibilities again.

_Please._

The darkness behind his eyes is so complete that it's like falling. Falling without touching bottom. And that's when he feels it, the soft touch of wetness across his cheeks, like a caress.

His eyes open.

Snow.

Soft and silent. Dusting, sifting through the bare trees. Thicker now, beginning to layer the playground, laying over the ruts from children's feet, falling over the world and obscuring the skyline.

Another flake touches his eyelashes and then dissolves. He keeps his eyes on the sky, above the city, just that pure and cold darkness threaded through with silver light and snow.

It's all so rich and strange.


	14. December 14 - Here With Me

_December 14 - Here With Me_

* * *

Pretty lights on the tree  
I'm watching them shine  
You should be here with me

-Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Death Cab for Cutie

* * *

Kate stares at the miniature tree set up on the side table in front of the office window. The lights blur in her vision, pinks and oranges and yellows running to a smear of gold. The laptop across her thighs falls asleep with inactivity, the darkness of the night drawing heavily down over her.

She's alone.

"Katherine, darling, where's Richard?"

Kate drags her gaze from the little tree, turns her head to see Martha standing in the doorway of the office, her gloves in one hand, coat thrown over her arm. Back from whatever sparkling holiday party she attended.

Kate glances at the time on the desk clock, sits up straight when she realizes it's after midnight. "He said he was going for a walk."

"Oh," Martha says sympathetically, that cluck of her tongue. She comes into the office and sits on the arm of the couch right at Kate's shoulder. "I understand, darling. It's natural to have these little spats. Although... you didn't go after him?"

"I didn't - what?" She puts her feet on the ground and closes the lid of the computer, disconnecting herself from work email. "We didn't have a fight. Well, we sort of had a conversation earlier, but he went on his walk a little after dinner."

"After dinner... four hours ago?"

Kate presses two fingers to her lips, eyes narrowing. "It wasn't a huffy, storming-off-mad kind of walk." Was it?

"Oh, but it was. You know Richard; he wants attention for his drama llamas. He's probably freezing to death out there, too stubborn to come in when you haven't gone out after him."

And now she feels terrible. He always said his mother laid an excellent guilt trip, and was he ever right. _Welcome to the family, Kate._

But it is after midnight. And he did leave awhile ago.

"Dad's not here?"

Kate sighs, lifting her head to see Alexis in the doorway. The girl has her coat thrown over her arm in much the same manner as her grandmother, and really, lately, the two of them have been thick as thieves, parroting each other, ganging up, a united front.

_You didn't do your poem? Oh, it really is a big deal._

Yup, Kate is screwed.

"Kate, Dad's - is he missing?"

"No!" Kate blurts out, swiftly getting to her feet. "He's not _missing_, Alexis. He went for a walk. I know exactly where he is."

"Well. Where is he?"

"Um. I don't know right this second." Kate digs her phone out of her back pocket, swallows at the looks the two redheads are giving her. "I _will_ know where he is. He let me lojack his phone."

Alexis actually relaxes, though she doesn't offer up her once-easy smiles, just a tight pinch of her mouth.

"Okay," Kate sighs, "okay. All right. I'm going."

* * *

She finds him easily enough, following the map on her phone with its step by step directions, her shoulders hunched against the cold. Castle is sitting alone in one of their swings inside the park, his hands dangling between his knees, his head bowed.

He looks so lonesome that she's stricken where she stands, unable to move past the fence. Has he really been so upset this whole time? She thought this was about her apartment, but now she doesn't know.

His head falls back, face to the sky, his throat working once like he can't swallow it back.

_I'm just a man,_ he told her.

Yes, but he's the man she's in love with, the man who loves her, and she can't help feeling like their love story imbues him with some kind of power. Over her. Power over their world.

He's Richard Castle. The _writer_. She stood in line to get one of his books signed; she was crazy over him in a still-waters-run-deep kind of way. The night she crashed his book release party with the intention of asking him some pointed and rather accusatory questions, she was electric and breathless at the idea of confronting him, battling wits with the man who'd written Derrick Storm.

And then he really was just a man. He opened his mouth and gave her the smarmy persona she didn't want to believe was real - but of course _did_ believe because she's wired to distrust anything she likes too much.

It was love at first read, not love at first sight. But she fell in love with him anyway, over time, all of him: the writer, the sidekick, the partner, the man. And she's having trouble dismantling those identities he wears like cloaks to hide the parts he thinks no one is interested in seeing.

She's interested. She wants to see _him. _

Tonight in the silvery darkness, she knows now that she's wounded this man who wounded her first, and it's not an excuse or a good reason, but it's life. And they will try harder and maybe not even do better the next time, but they keep trying.

She starts walking his way, filled up with resolve, determination and apologies, and that's when the snow begins to fall.

Kate comes to a halt right before the swings and Castle's eyes close into the snow, a breath so deep it fills his chest.

"Kate," he sighs.

She opens her palms to the air and watches the snow touch her skin and melt. But it sticks to the frost-laced ground, covering the grass and dirt and wood chips, even freezing against the metal of the swing set.

She tracks the ruts in the ground to the swing and sinks down into the cold rubber seat beside his, stiffening as the chill races through her. Castle isn't looking at her.

"Hey, Rick, pretty long walk you took," she starts off.

He shrugs. "Just kept going." His cheek leans against his hand gripping the chain. "Didn't mean to stay out so late."

She nods. "This about the apartment? Because I owe you an apology-"

"It's not about that," he says, shoulders coming up. At least he looks at her. Softly, gentleness in his gaze.

Like he wants to let her down easy.

Her stomach flips.

"I just - didn't expect to get kicked out of the _one_ place I ever managed to make a difference to someone-"

"What did I tell you about that?" she cuts in, eyebrows knitting together. "Your books mean more than that. You're sidelining your work, Castle, when you say the 12th is more important."

He closes his mouth, shakes his head.

She didn't do that right; she didn't say the right thing. She's messing it all up. "Your books saved me, Castle."

His eyes hold steady on hers; she doesn't doubt he knows.

He just wants more. He always wants more. "The 12th Precinct is where you took me seriously," he says. "That's where you let me in, and yeah, maybe I forced my way in." A self-deprecating half-smile is crooked on his mouth. "Where Captain Montgomery sat at his desk, where he told me that you'd listen to me. You wouldn't listen to anyone else, but you'd listen to me."

She offers him her hand across the foot of space between their swings and he takes it. She squeezes. "I listened. Didn't always like it, but I heard you."

"That's gone. You said it, you know? We were supposed to do it together. Partners. Catching killers. Back and forth."

"I know," she husks. It _kills_ her that he did this; he did this. He made a stupid blood oath with the stupid mob and now he's tainted; he can't work with her any longer. But that's also Castle, her husband - he takes a blood oath. "Believe me, I miss you too. I guess I thought we'd always be doing this. Until I retired."

"He said he wouldn't take the law into his own hands. He promised," Castle says, looking bleak. "And I believed him. I really thought he'd honor his word."

"What'd you expect when you work with the mob?" she can't help saying. "It's not like people change, Castle-"

"You changed."

She shuts her mouth, closes her eyes, feels the gentle touch of snow layering over her lashes.

"And I changed too," he says quietly. "Tell me I didn't. When we met, Kate, I was about as far away from husband material as I could get. I'd just gone through a pretty nasty divorce, killed my main character in the hopes I'd get out of my funk. I've changed. Tell me I've changed."

She opens her eyes, blinking past white blurs of flakes falling from her lashes. "You've changed," she promises.

He takes in a sharp breath, closes his eyes against her. "And so have you."

That feels like an accusation. She's changed, but in good ways too. "I'm not holed up in my dad's cabin, am I?" she says. "I'm not dead. And I would be if I hadn't changed. If our partnership hadn't changed me. For the better. Change is good."

His fingers squeeze hers back, but his clutch has some desperation in it, gripping her hand. His gaze finally comes back to hers, intent, like he's gearing up for something big. "Change is good. It's like you said, Kate. I thought we'd be partners until _we_ decided differently."

She nods, opens her mouth, but he cuts right across.

"But maybe not your retirement. I thought I'd be a stay at home dad again."

The breath leaves her in a rush, her eyes blinking through thickening snow.

He lets go of her hand, grips the chains of the swing, and leans back. His head tilts towards the sky, his own lashes thick with flakes. "Yeah. That's what I thought."

She's mute.

"You know, I remember waking up in the hospital and seeing my family there. Alexis and Mother. But it was all out of balance. They were one side and you were the other. Only you weren't there; they were tipping the scales, but it was all out of whack in my chest. And I knew - knew then that everything had changed."

She presses her eyes closed.

"I just didn't know how badly it had changed. And even - even after - after you wouldn't look at me the same, I thought, I thought - I can make this right. God, I had no idea."

"Castle-"

"And it's killing me." She can hear him standing up; she doesn't want to open her eyes to watch it happen. Watch him leave her now for good. "It's killing me that I can't change this. I did it once before. And I meant it when I said I'd wait for you all over again; I'm trying. But now I don't even have the precinct, Kate. I've got no way to make inroads. How am I supposed to do this all over again if we're not even partners?"

She jumps to her feet, flings herself at him, tucking her body into his, arms around his neck. "We are partners. Don't say that. We are."

His hands come hesitantly to her back, barely touching her, but he buries his face against her neck. "We're not."

"Stop saying that," she mutters. "I didn't mean to - to make you wait. You've waited enough. I-"

"Why did everything have to change?" he growls, suddenly gripping her hard. "Why does it have to be different? It's not different for me. I'm the same man."

_But you're not the same woman._

She sinks back down on her heels, draws her arms down until just her palms rest against his chest. She doesn't know how to combat this.

"Castle, just - come home with me? We don't have the precinct, not like we did, but we have our home."

She hates the question in her voice, hates how suddenly she can feel the wind and the freezing temperature, how the snow sticks to her eyelashes and dampens the back of her neck.

"I want to go home," she says. "With you."

She takes his hand and tugs, pulling him away from the swings. She's so grateful when he follows that it is a weight melting in her chest, draining free.

They're going home.

They can figure it out from there.


	15. December 15 - We Can Start

_December 15 - We Can Start_

* * *

You're already home where you feel loved  
'Cause there are stars  
Up above  
We can start moving forward

-Lost In My Mind, The Head and the Heart

* * *

They've had a strange weekend. Sunday stilted and too careful, the remnants of tension between them creating such a polite divide.

Mondays are always better - _were_ always better. And he's determined to be her partner even if he can't follow her into work this morning.

Castle wakes first and brushes his teeth, his noise in the bathroom prompting her to follow. He turns on the shower to get it heated and to get her moving a little faster, and she comes in stripping her pajamas, even tosses her shirt in his face without a comment.

Everything as usual. All the same routines, like nothing has changed.

He raps his knuckles on the glass door of the shower as he leaves her to it, heading for the hall and out to the living room, still in his robe. He goes with French press this morning - their coffee selection is usually at his discretion - because boiling the water will take up a little more time. He doesn't need to dress for work, so that gives him some leeway.

She's taking her time in the shower; it's still running. Does she move quicker when she knows he's got to squeeze in his shower behind hers? Does she think she'll take up all the hot water or that there's not enough time for them to both be luxuriant about it?

The differences this Monday are minute, but they are there.

He's not going in to work today, just like last week, but after their unsettled weekend, it has a new flavor, a sense of oppressive eternity to the mundane.

He's still in his robe when he wanders into the office, sinks down at his desk, lifts the lid on his laptop. But it's too early in the morning for words, even the ones he wants to write for her, and his eyes wander across the room, cataloging things - hers and his both - that have accumulated on the shelves.

He's got elephants now, top shelf, a troupe of them winding through the cliff-like old typewriters. His phrenology head was moved from the desk to the bookcase as well, along with one of her framed, pressed flowers. The shelf below that has a posable mannequin with its blank wooden face, the fingerless hands, the joints all showing. She's perched it on top of a row of small Penguin-edition books she's added to their now combined library.

He wonders, idly, if in thirty years he will pick up one of those books and not remember whose it was originally, if he will thumb through it and see the notes in the margins in her young scrawl, still indecipherable, and think to himself, _was this hers first or has it always been ours_?

It's a warm thought. He likes that distant, hazy, future self. The picture isn't complete, the details not filled in, but they're still _them_. And that's all he needs.

Partners, she promised.

"You writing?" she says, her presence in the room dispelling the mist of dreams. She's got her head tilted as she puts her earrings on.

"I might," he shrugs. "Waiting on the water to boil."

"Mm, French press?" Lips smiling at him, her path diverts towards his desk.

He turns his chair to her approach, widens his knees as she steps between them. Her hands fall on his shoulders and her hair is still wet, smells richly of rain forests. Her kiss falls to his forehead first and then down to his mouth.

"French press," he confirms around her kiss. "And I was going to use the rest of it for some tea."

"Throat hurt again?"

"Yeah," he says roughly, nodding against the weight of her as she settles into him, straddling his thighs. "Shouldn't have stayed out so long."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, you know. Not quite awake yet."

She nods, arms hooking around his neck, but she's studying him. "Subdued isn't my favorite look on you," she murmurs. One of her arms loosens, her hand coming down to tug on the lapel of his robe. "We'll figure this out."

"Of course, we will," he says easily. He's never had a doubt. Just. "Sucks, you know? Holidays are rife with murder; worst time to get kicked out." He makes his eyebrows dance at her, smiling so she sees the creases at the corners of his eyes where he knows it looks the most honest.

"You don't fool me," she whispers, coming in close to dust her mouth below his eyes. Makes his chest catch. "I know you."

"Well," he smudges his lips along her cheek in response. "I'm getting there."

"I'm sorry."

"My own fault."

"Still. Does it help that I miss you?"

The kettle whistles from the kitchen and he squeezes her hips, his chest tight.

She ignores the unspoken nudge and runs two fingers down his nose in a move that both startles and arouses him. "Kate."

"I love you. We'll figure this out. Partners no matter the empty chair at my desk."

His smile is more genuine this time, if maybe not quite as deep; he wraps his arms around her and she comes down against him, pressing close.

"All right," he gruffs. "The kettle is driving me crazy. Let me go so I can make it shut up."

"If only it were that easy," she teases, dragging her fingers down his lapels and tugging even as she stands. "Making things shut up."

"Hey, now. I'm shut up," he says, standing to follow her even as she pulls him by the belt of his robe. "I'm shut up for good."

"It really is so very quiet," she admits, a little laugh, a bite to her bottom lip. "And with all the holiday decorations up, it's depressingly bleak."

"Most people, Kate?" he starts, grabbing his belt to keep it in the loops. "Most people wouldn't equate holiday decorations with your brand of bleak, babe."

"We're not most people." A shrug and she's letting him go, sauntering around the kitchen to the fridge. He likes the _we._

He hears Alexis on the stairs and quickly belts his robe, tying it off just as his daughter enters. "Morning, pumpkin."

"Hey, Dad. I've got to meet with my Spanish professor. We're getting our orals today."

Kate laughs at the look on his face, nudges his hip. "Oral exams, Rick."

"Ah. Well, good luck on those."

"Our _grades_," Alexis huffs at him, her cheeks pink and her eyes avoiding both of them. "We get our grades back on the oral part of the exam. I won't know what I made until next semester for the rest of it, but it's a good judge of how well I did."

"How well do you think you did?" Kate asks, pulling fruit from the crisper and taking it to the cutting board. Alexis is handing her the knife and standing at her side, the two of them in a semi-closed loop of communication.

It's kind of nice, the two of them easy like this with each other. He woke up and things had changed, but at least this is a good change. They bonded over the course of his two months missing, and it's not how he would have chosen for it to happen, but at least it happened.

He listens with only some of his attention as he starts making Kate's coffee, refusing to let himself stay 'subdued' as she called it.

When Kate kisses him good-bye at the door, she has a little tug on the knot in his belt, a flicker of her eyes that make him promises for later.

He grins back and shoos her out the door, turns to an un-empty loft, greeting his mother as she finally graces them with her presence.

* * *

He's assembled most of the family Christmas gifts, set things into motion for the last of it, and now he's just absently browsing the internet, a daisy chain of links from donating to Wikipedia to life-sized replicas of the Iron Throne, and he's mostly just lost in his own head.

This is what he used to do, before the Twelfth. Sit at his desk and write a little bit, surf the net, obsess over the critical response to Derrick Storm's latest mind-numbing adventure, and peruse the society columns for clues to the next soiree he had to be at or the fundraiser he accidentally agreed to chair in one of his fits of self-loathing. And then he would sink back into his ennui.

He knew, vaguely somewhere, that he would be a stay at home dad a second time around. But he's always thought they would get another couple years, just the two of them figuring out each other, catching killers by day and making love by night. He had rosy expectations of building this world together for the eventual addition to their family. It would then be all the wonder and fascinated absorption with the little person they had made, _look at how small the toes are_, take endless photos on his phone and send them to her at work, a little ridiculous but she would never stop him, she would love it too, how miniature everything was, how new and no-one-has-ever-had-a-baby-before-but-us.

A few years from now has morphed into this nebulous, conditional outcome. Waiting for things to change but nothing changing.

Castle closes his laptop when he starts clicking through toddler elf costumes.

He wants to call her; he shouldn't call her.

And at that exact moment, his phone lights up with her face on the picture ID. Castle actually does a doubletake to be sure he's not imagining it, and then he swipes it off his desk and answers, visions of plump-faced beaming cherubs with pointy ears and jingle bell soft shoes meeting Santa for the first time still in his head.

"Hey," she says. She sounds rushed. "I had an idea, and you can say no, but hear me out. I've got a ton of overtime for working so many weekends and I can either take it as time and a half pay - or I can take two days free and clear. Well, not two days the week of or following Christmas or New Year's, but I have two days if you want-"

"When?" he hurries, calculating already in his head.

"Okay, so it basically leaves me with today and tomorrow, which is kind of bad because Alexis just finished exams, or the 18th and 19th."

"Done," he says, all those visions swirling. "18th and 19th. Book it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Just to the Hamptons - I mean, that's really all we can do-"

"The Hamptons is perfect," he grins. "Hamptons is exactly where we should go."

"Yeah," she echoes. "Oh, I do have that weekend free, but if the boys get swamped, I'd have to come back here to pitch in."

"You mean we might have four days?" he asks.

"Yeah. Long weekend in the Hamptons, just you and me."

Oh. _Not_ a family trip. Huh, okay, well, readjustment of his expectations, but he's still good. "You and me," he promises back. "This will be good."

He sounds a little overeager, like he can will it to be true, and she must hear that because she stutters something on the phone and then sighs. "It will be good, right?"

He's going to make it happen; he is. "Our first Christmas together, Kate. It's going to be special."

"Oh, good," she whispers. "Good. Then - I'll see you tonight. We can plan everything."

"Or nothing," he offers. "We can let life happen."

She lets out a breath over the phone that he can't read - good or bad - but then her voice comes warmly to him. "I like that. No plans then, Castle. Let life happen."

That sounds like a promise. A promise he wasn't sure she could ever make him after his missing summer.


	16. December 16 - In Your Book

_December 16 - In Your Book_

* * *

I wrote my name in your book,  
Only God knows why...

And I'm out on my own,  
It's too hard.

Feel like running, feel like running,  
running off.

-Goodbye, England (Covered in Snow), Laura Marling

* * *

Kate wanders lonely through the crowd-frantic streets, though none of it seems to touch her. Not their busyness, not their sparkle, not their cheer. A solitary figure in all this merriment. She seems to carry a shield with her, something that even these last-minute shoppers recognize in their single-minded focus as being entirely off-limits. Her sadness a wall, her sorrow a taste in the air that pinches their mouths and makes them divert from her path.

She misses her mom.

Her mom would know what to do about everything, about feeling betrayed for two months and yet so lovesick only to have him back like nothing ever happened. Her mom would say the exact right thing and show Kate how stupid she's being and it would magically be fixed.

Or not. But it feels like all her wounds circle back to her mother's death. The first abandonment in a string of them, and Kate has had enough therapy to know it.

Christmas is less than ten days away and she really just wants her mom. Here. Alive. Making insinuations about having grandchildren.

But she's not.

Kate steps off of Fifth Avenue's holly and be-ribboned buttresses, the sparkle of cold light along the ages-old brownstone, glinting on the newer steel sides. She presses her back to the building behind her and glances up, wishing the sky was blue.

But it's grey; the day is grey and heavy and she feels it in her chest.

She really needs to get away from the city. They can head out tomorrow after work; she can leave it all behind, build something new.

Kate slides her fingers along the cold concrete edifice, startled at the touch of marble. She glances back and up, realizes she's at the bookstore. His bookstore.

Well, the one he signs his books at every year.

She slips upstream, dodging bulky coats and awkward packages, moving around tourists who are stopping to gawk and natives who are just trying to get home. She finds the front doors and pulls back on the heavy chrome handle, caught off-guard by its weight. It hits her in the back as she comes inside, like it's shoving her forward.

The immediate hush makes her shoulders slump, her feet go still.

Rich, dark wood and the smell of paper and glossy magazines. Deep shelves with orderly stacks of books. Plastic-encased calendars on display near the front registers. The sounds come in more slowly somehow, as if all this paper muffles outside stimuli, and she finds herself drawn into the rows of bookcases.

Biographies. American History. Self Help. Poetry. She smiles and touches her fingers to the top row of thin volumes, drags a line down the spines, bumping over Angelou, Clifton, Cummings, Dickinson...

She spots 'Leaves of Grass' on the bottom shelf, Whitman's own, and her smiles slip onto her face, spreading her lips. _O my soul._

She's forgotten. So quickly. How did she forget his poetic seduction on top of his desk? He _is_ a writer, and it does give him some kind of superpower, no matter his own estimation of himself. Those words have always transported her, and in doing so, remade the world inside her head.

His books. Would they be under mystery or mainstream?

Kate goes hunting, stalking around bookshelves, avoiding the over-helpful booksellers, slipping between the rows. She bypasses the classics even though they're always alluring, finds herself before the higher shelves of science fiction, her eyes skimming the face-fronting covers - just in case. Little things, this year, gifts of memory and interest.

She does pick up one she thinks he might like, carries it with her as far as the end of the row, changes her mind. She goes back, puts the book where it belongs, resumes her mission.

She realizes quickly that the main floor has been set up for fast fixes - quick gifts and board games, stocking stuffers, best sellers. The real selections are above, the next few floors; they'll give depth to her search.

She winds away from the coffee bar set up in the middle of the bookstore, mounts the stairs leading to the second floor. The beautiful aroma of roasted beans and vanilla, mocha and frothy milky nearly calls her back down. But she keeps going, ascends the stairs with her fingers trailing over the rail.

She scans the rows. Paranormal Romance. Science fiction. Historical Fiction. That's all.

The Outlander series is front and center and she drifts over, picks up the first book. But her mind is on the search, and so she puts it back, moves to the spiral staircase again. The first thing that greets her at the top of the stairs is Richard Castle.

She nearly falls back down the stairs. But it's a stand-up cardboard cut out only.

Kate catches herself on the rail and comes slowly forward, mesmerized maybe, enthralled by a morbid desire to touch it.

Her palm goes to his heart.

It's only cool, thin cardboard. The veneer of paint shaped into a suit.

Her eyes drift away.

Kate finds the Nikki Heat books laid out on a table just beside the standee. _Raging Heat_. She never read it. She couldn't. She read selections from the proofs, but after he went missing, the book came out and it was... awful.

No one could stop talking about it, about him, about the woman left at the altar. _Raging Heat_ has been on New York Times bestseller list for months now, won't budge. Sales rolled in, like speculation, and it has taken Kate until now to even be able to pick the book up.

She should buy it.

She should read the whole book with Castle in the bed with her, touchable. Because she has him. He's not gone. He'll write another.

Kate clasps the book to her chest and moves for the registers at the back of the floor, her heart flooded with thumping adrenaline for no reason at all. She stands in the horrendously long line, every second an agony of indecisive doubt, not certain she should be buying it at all. He has a couple copies in the office, delivered in a box a few weeks into his disappearance. He hasn't touched them either.

But Castle isn't gone. He's here.

It takes twenty minutes to get to the head of the line and the woman at the register has to be in her sixties. Beautiful white hair, wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, her hands aged with liver spots. Taking her time. She cradles Kate's choice and deftly scans the ISBN as the computer rings up her purchase.

"Oh, don't you love his books?" the woman smiles. Her eyes lift to Kate's, genuine interest there. "I love this Nikki Heat. Such a terrible thing to happen."

Kate freezes. "Terrible thing?" she croaks.

"I'm sure you heard. So strange. Missing for months, everyone said he was dead, and then he comes back and has no idea what happened. Like Agatha Christie."

"Agatha Christie?" Kate says, completely bewildered. She swipes her credit card at the reader, not even looking. "Agatha _Christie_?"

"Oh, she was a British mystery novelist-"

"No, I know. I've read - but wait. Hang on. What about Agatha Christie?"

"Oh, dear, she disappeared."

"She _did?_"

"She did." The woman leans forward as if in confidence. "I can't remember for how long - was it months or days? I do know they found her car abandoned by a lake, quite mysterious. The whole country in an uproar. She was found later, but she had amnesia."

"I - I didn't know that," Kate says. The older lady is moving even more slowly, perhaps enjoying the conversation, and suddenly Kate doesn't want to leave either. "Agatha Christie disappeared and they never knew why?"

"Her husband had told her - I think this is right - he was having an affair."

Kate flinches.

"So Christie leaves that night, upset about her husband wanting a divorce, but that's still just speculation. No one ever knew. Strange, isn't it? Because Richard Castle disappeared on _his_ wedding day. We're all running from something."

"He wasn't running," she croaks out. "He was taken." _But then he stayed away._

"Oh, but he was found too," the woman says joyfully. "Such a shame. That poor girl. Did you hear if they got married yet?"

Kate's mouth opens and then closes again. The older lady is handing over her bag with the bought book inside, slipping the receipt in, and Kate takes it.

"They got married," Kate says finally.

The woman actually clasps her hands to her chest. "And now to live happily ever after!"

Kate manages to smile. "I hope so."

"Next?"

She takes that as her cue and turns away, the plastic handle of the bag sticking to her sweat-damp palm as she heads for the stairs.

She takes a slow breath, feels both weighed down by the book dangling from her fingers but also curiously, amazingly light.

* * *

She hides it. Why? She's not sure at all.

She hides the book under the bed and they make dinner together with smiles that keep touching, lips to lips, even fingers to fingers. He's telling a story about Ryan, though she can't figure out if this is an old thing or if it happened today and Ryan just texted him about it, and she doesn't exactly care.

They eat between easy conversation, knees bumping under the table because they're sitting so close. Alexis comes in halfway through and makes herself a plate, plunks down a bottle of water at her father's side. Castle gives Kate a look, a raised eyebrow, and she gives it back, both of them amused by the girl.

Alexis sits with them, talking a mile a minute about this great opportunity to join a Biochem study group. ("But, Alexis, you don't have Biochemistry" he says. Alexis glances his way. "But I might. If I like it. You never know.") And then a long conversation about finding a major versus enjoying college life, Kate arguing for moderation, and as usual, Castle offering up stories of his classic college pranks.

Alexis's phone goes off and she snags it from her back pocket, thumbs the alert. A startled noise - almost a squeal - and she grabs her half-empty plate and glass, dashes towards the sink saying she has to go, she's late, she loves them, bye.

They blink, staring after the whirlwind, the closed door settling silence over them.

Is this what their life looks like? Empty nest.

Kate glances down at her plate, realizes half a second later that Castle is the one with the empty nest, the one with a heart that aches a little each time he sees his daughter for only mere moments.

She looks up and slides her fingers over his wrist, squeezes. "You okay?" she murmurs.

He turns his head to her. "Yeah. I'm okay. Getting used to her coming and going now that she's back in the dorm." He gives her a smile that's pretty lame, but he says, "Ready to clean up?"

Kate stands, takes both their plates. "I'll do it. You go - do whatever. Video game to cheer yourself up."

He gives her a sideways look, but she laughs, leans in to kiss the top of his head. "Seriously. Call of Action."

"Duty," he corrects automatically. She smirks and he gives her a chuckle. "Okay, all right. I guess I will... you okay?"

"I am," she promises. And, as if to prove it, she combs her fingers through his hair, slowly, until his eyes close under her touch. "I'm good."

She leans in and kisses the corner of his eye, where his smile still lingers in those creased lines.

When she pushes on him, he goes, and she moves to clean off the table. She washes up the kitchen, listening to his war cries and death threats as he plays the game. She dries her hands on a dish towel and drops it over the handle of the oven to air out.

She wanders back through the office, Castle giving her a glance of his eyes in question, but she waves him off. She moves into their bedroom and sits on her side of the mattress, uses her foot to slide the book out from under the bed.

She picks it up and opens it, fingers trailing over his name on the title page. She knows the dedication by heart even if she hasn't seen it physically inside the book before now. She could never quite go there.

But she wants to. She wants to not be afraid to read a Castle novel. She wants to not fear that reading it will break some magic spell she performed to bring him back and now he'll be gone.

She wants to reclaim them; she wants his words back. The _power_ he has over her with his words.

Kate leans over and grabs the pen from the bedside table, opens his book to the first blank cover page. She writes her name inside it. Claiming it. Possessing it.

This is hers.

* * *

Kate reads curled in bed, her head pillowed on her arm, Castle asleep behind her, exhausted from four hours of Call of Duty. The light from the bathroom casts just enough golden glow over the bed to keep her from getting up and finding a flashlight, though she has to squint.

She finds herself shivering during the good parts, flipping pages as fast as she can read them, practically skimming.

She yelps when fingers touch her neck, half-turns in bed to find a sleep-sluggish Castle laughing at her a little. He wriggles up closer and slides his arm around her waist. "What are you-"

He goes still and she waits, book open on the mattress.

"Any good?" he says roughly.

She smiles into her elbow. "Can't seem to put it down."

He hums behind her and his knee comes up to frame hers. His arm tightens around her waist but his hand comes up to the book, thumb rubbing the edges of the pages. "Wrote it for you, Kate."

"That's why - why I couldn't read it until now. Didn't want to hear you say good-bye."

He's silent for a long time, and then, "Wrote them all for you."

She bites her lip, turns her head to see him. He's hesitant, but she lifts her hand and frames his face, kisses his chin. "I know you did."

"Yeah?"

"I've always known."

"Then it's never good-bye," he says. "It's just _hello_." A pause as his lips touch hers. "And _I really love you._"

She lets out a shaky breath. "I really love you too."


	17. December 17 - To the Coast

_December 17 - To the Coast_

* * *

May we move to the coast?

-Winter's Wool, Tom the Lion

* * *

Castle buys the car.

He just - does it. He should ask her first, technically, and if she wants something different, he'll return it, but his car was totaled this summer in the Hamptons and it's time to move forward. So he buys the car: an electric Tesla with four doors, a sleek Model S that begs to be driven. A family car that feels and acts like a sports car.

His throat is scratchy as he seals the deal, signs the paperwork; the office is stuffy. He's right under the heating vent and his eyes and throat dry out while he finalizes everything, but he's too thrilled to care.

They're going to the Hamptons; they're going away for a long weekend.

The key to the Tesla comes in a box shaped like the black car itself, and Castle pries it open, palms the fob. Keyless entry, touch start, quiet engine, even driver profiles that will automatically adjust the seat and mirrors and control settings depending on which of them access the car.

It's luxurious and it's Christmas and they deserve it.

He drives it home fiddling with everything, cautious with the turns, his heart fluttering up near his throat. He parks it in the underground garage and sets the alarm, can't even begin to imagine how she'll react. He goes up to the loft and does all their packing because she's been swamped at work, but it gives him something to do with his giddy-nervous energy. She texts him when she's finagled an hour's grace from the usual knock-off time, and he drives to the 12th to pick her up, eager for their winter getaway, eager for her reaction.

The black car in the dusk, the chrome accents, the heated leather seats, the electric engine.

He double parks out front, but Kate is already waiting outside, her shoulders hunched against the cold and her nose buried down in her scarf. She doesn't seem him at first, of course; but she's a detective and it doesn't take her more than a heartbeat to realize who it is parking illegally.

She gasps and Castle opens the driver's door. He leaves the engine running so she can hear it purr, and he steps up onto the sidewalk, waiting for her decision. Kate pushes her whole body into him and wraps herself around him with her laughter spilling out into the twilight.

"You bought a car."

His voice is gravel when it comes out. "My old one got wrecked."

"God," she whispers, disengaging from him to stare back.

He cups the back of her neck. "Too soon. I know."

She shakes her head. "Just - caught me off guard. A car. It's handsome."

"Yeah?" he grins, heart lifting. "I thought so too."

She pulls out of his arms and walks the length of the car, not touching, her astonishment turning to wonder. "Is this your Christmas present? Am I off the hook?" she calls to him.

"Pretty much," he grins. His clears this throat and follows her around to the driver's side. "That how you want to do it?"

"Pretty much," she laughs. "You're not the easiest person to shop for, you know. You _have_ everything. I told you to make a list-"

"I made a list," he protests.

"With _one_ thing on it."

"Just you," he says happily. She rolls her eyes but it made her happy too, still does, judging by the look she's giving him. "Yeah, the Tesla can be my gift. Keeps on giving."

"Can I drive?" she says slyly. "Since I bought it for you."

"I suppose this means I'm no longer allowed to drive to the Hamptons," he frowns.

"Not really. You just sound tired," she says, stepping into him. "Your throat still sore?"

He shrugs but now that she's mentioned it, he's got a dull throb in his skull, a tightness in his chest that he thought was only anticipation.

"I'll drive," she says, fingers stroking along his neck as she steps back. "I bet the engine is a beast."

He laughs, watching her practically wriggle in delight as she leans in at the driver's side. He's astonished by just how viscerally it affects him, seeing her with the car. He's going to wind up letting her drive everywhere at this rate. "You just want to play with my new toy," he grunts.

She flashes him a grin, and wow, he wishes he could buy her things. All kinds of things, delightful or fancy or wondrous, but sexy. Sexy things.

"I really do," she says. "I wanna see how fast I can get away with."

* * *

The open highway is a silver-bricked road leading into the deepening night. He can see the ocean from his window. Shimmering as if layered in opals.

The seat is a warm blanket around him. Kate drives smoothly, sedately even, taking her time, conserving the battery.

When they were in the city, she maneuvered and angled and sliced her way through rush hour traffic like a surgeon's knife, but the moment they got to the interstate, she came down to this easy and comfortable pace. He thinks that she likes the challenge of the traffic, and that the clear lanes stretching on either side of them now are no challenge. Therefore, no need to prove mastery.

She has one hand slung low in the steering wheel and the other tangled with his. Her thumb strokes along his knuckle and the moon is a wisp in the night, overwhelmed by stars.

He leans his head back and listens to the rush of road under the tires, a susurration that sounds like the ocean itself, a rolling rhythm that partners with the stroke of her thumb along his skin. His eyelids are heavy but he likes his view of the static horizon and, at the edge of his vision, his wife's profile as she drives.

It's just Kate. Nothing else to it. She's not exceptionally beautiful or undiscovered country; she's not a rare and delicate flower. She's Kate, the woman he's shared his life with, has been sharing this life with practically since he met her. Kate, his partner, no matter if he's not inside the precinct.

Kate. The having is nice. He still needs to figure out the keeping, but the having fills his chest.

His throat hurts, he realizes. Raw ribbons. The slice of a razor as he swallows. It's been building slowly, small wounds so he never felt the cut, but the quiet has calmed the distractions and given him space to breathe, and now he knows.

He's getting a chest cold for Christmas.

Castle sighs and closes his eyes.

"Lay the seat back," she says quietly, a voice that brooks no arguments.

He does, slowly, the mechanical movement of the seat efficient and smooth.

"You'll feel better with some rest," she murmurs. He can barely hear her, he can only hear the quiet, feel the awareness in his throat.

Her thumb still strokes, the car shushes him in concert with the quiet road, and he falls asleep.

* * *

"Hey."

He's lifted lightly from sleep, easing up through the mist. His eyes open and he sees the house first, through his passenger window, and then he turns his head and finds Kate with her hands loose in her lap.

She looks like they've been sitting here for a while, she looks like she's been watching him sleep.

"Hey," he roughs back, struggling to sit up. "We're here."

"We're here."

She remembered the gate code all by herself, he thinks. She didn't have to ask, didn't wake him until now.

They're still inside the car; neither of them have moved to open the doors. He shifts and presses his thumb to the seat controls, adjusts it until it's upright again, going slowly, acclimating to wakefulness.

"We can leave the bags for tomorrow," she offers. "Go straight to bed."

The service came and cleaned, turned down the beds; they keep shower stuff and toothbrushes here permanently, so they should be able to walk right in, seamlessly, like no one has ever left, like they're picking up their old lives right where they left them last time - about to be married. They could go right now and leave this all behind.

But he hasn't moved. He's still inside the cocoon of the car, leather and warmth, her presence so real beside him, her face shrouded in shadows on this near-moonless night.

"Come on," she says quietly. "Time to go."

* * *

She wears his undershirt to bed. He's only in boxers but that's okay because he feels over-warm and his throat is dry despite the shower. She leads him by the hand out of the bathroom, the steam wandering out with them, and over to the bed.

The firelight throws her shadow around the room, an intimate dance, and she lays down with him carefully, arranging the covers, aligning their bodies, pressing herself where she knows he wants her.

The room is licked with golden flame and she must not be tired because her eyes are open, he thinks, though mostly he can see the top of her head and feel the brush of her lashes as she blinks.

Time is a heartbeat, and a leap of flames, and shadows on the ceiling.

"You're sick," she murmurs. "You're never this quiet."

He rumbles with a laugh that doesn't escape his chest and her fingers smooth his bare skin, help him relax.

"Just get some sleep," she says, doing all the talking for them tonight. "You'll feel better in the morning."

"Feel fine," he rasps. And he's surprised to find it's the truth. He feels just fine. Even with the burr in his chest and the catch in his throat, he feels better than he has in days, lying with her in bed.

He doesn't know when he falls asleep, moving from warmth to dreamless warmth, but he feels the chill on his skin when she moves to turn off the gas fireplace, feels the heat beginning to leak out of the room until she lays back down again.

He shifts his arm up around her shoulders and she's murmuring easements into his ear, drawing the overs up, and he can hear his own breath in his chest, how loud it sounds, and he knows the ocean is a bad idea for him right now but such a very good one too.

He'll take her to the coast; they'll have Christmas in the waves.

He's dreaming now and she's here too, his dreams are silent movies, but she's here; he always sees her in the corner of his vision, like she was in the car, piloting them home.


	18. December 18 - With Their Secrets

_December 18 - With Their Secrets_

* * *

songs with their secrets in the lines  
a walk to the river just to think  
and watch the water as it lurches

-She Screams Christmas, Frightened Rabbit

* * *

Kate wanders through the second story of the Hamptons house, searching for a blanket while the thunderstorm echoes over her head. She gets lucky in one of the guest rooms, sinking to her knees before the hope chest at the foot of the bed. She lifts the lid and the aromatic scent of wood and lavender sachets fills her nose.

Who put these here? Who folded these blankets and arranged them so carefully, placed the lavender packets with their pale purple ribbons inside each one? She can't imagine it was the cleaning staff or the winter caretaker, but who else? It's strange to realize it will be her from now on, folding away the blankets from their winter weekends, drying the beach towels after Fourth of July.

She runs her hands over the treasure inside the hope chest: cashmere, fleece, fuzzy, quilted, plush, velour, Disney princesses-

Kate bites her bottom lip, strokes the Cinderella blanket that must have been Alexis's. She reaches for the fleece and draws it out, standing up again and letting the lid close on someone's handiwork. Thunder crashes outside and the room flares white with lightning.

"Kate?"

She pulls the blanket around her and goes out into the hall, finds Castle standing at the foot of the stairs with two glasses of wine. He lifts one to her. "Dinner is ready. You cold?"

"A little," she murmurs, heading down to meet him.

"I can turn up the heat-"

"No, no," she says, waving him off. She takes the wine and sips slowly. There's no point in turning up the heat in this huge house. "Blanket's all I need. And wine."

He smiles and holds out his hand to her, but she's got the blanket clasped in one and the wine in the other, so he quickly tugs her by the blanket, leading her to the dining room.

The lights are off and he's lit candles, but it's the storm outside the massive wall of windows that has her arrested. Lightning illuminates the angry, dark clouds churning across the sky, while the rain lashes the deck and the rolling lawn.

"Wow," she whispers. The house overlooks the ocean, and from this height they can see the turbulence of the storm lashing the waves.

"Yeah, right?" Castle pulls out her chair and she brushes close as she moves to sit. His fingers straighten the blanket and stroke down her shoulder, and then he bends over the back of the chair and kisses her cheek.

She's enough surprised that she turns into him and catches his chin, fingers curling at his jaw, and kisses him back. "Thanks for making dinner."

"Of course." A smile that shows just how quietly desperate he is. She doesn't want that; they needed a break from the city but it's not desperate yet.

Thunder goes off like a firecracker, rippling one after another across the sky, drawing her eyes towards the windows. Such a different view than their wedding and it was only a handful of weeks ago.

"Can we eat in the living room?" she asks, turning back to him. "Draw the curtains and watch the storm together?"

Castle takes a glance over the table and she realizes he meant this to be - intimate and romantic. Special. And she wants to move it, displace everything.

"Never mind," she says hurriedly. "This is lovely."

"No, you're right. We can eat on the couch. It'll be cozy."

"You don't - have rules about no food in the living room or something?" she says, biting her lip.

"I don't know, Kate. Do we?"

Her heart lifts a little and she stands up and steps into him, diverting his hand as he extends it towards his plate. His eyes track to hers, a brow raising, and she slides between him and the table, squeezing both of his hands and bumping her hips into his.

Lightning flares in the room.

"Does this remind you of something?" she murmurs, swaying slightly with him.

He looks amused by her. "You keeping me from my dinner?"

She laughs. "Mm, the storm. Lightning."

"Well, you're not soaking wet, so-"

She bites her lip - she's rather rudderless here, being the one to steer them clear - but she takes a chance. "I _can_ be."

Both of his eyebrows go up now.

She maneuvers away from the table and drags him towards the sliding glass doors, lets go of one of his hands to flip the lock on the screen.

"Kate, what are you-"

She pushes open the door and screen together, steps right out into the weather.

"Kate."

She pulls on his hand, her heart in her throat as he resists, that instant of negation she was afraid of, but then he lets himself be taken over the threshold.

They're both soaked in moments, the wind lashing their clothes to cling against skin, socks squelching in shoes, rain obscuring vision. She stands with him on his back deck in the middle of a thunderstorm, their fingers tangled together - both hands - and she realizes his heart is in his eyes.

"I love you," he says, more the motion of his mouth than any words getting to her over the storm. "I just want you."

She beams back at him, confident, and then starts tugging him towards the beach. Forget dinner, forget trying to get back to where they were. Time to start something new.

* * *

The lightning has moved out over the ocean now, but the rain still pours, cold and wet and chilling. They've taken refuge in the gazebo, it is still winter after all, and they sit close on the bench, Castle's chest warming her back. She keeps shivering, but she won't go inside.

His fingers trail up and down the back of her hand, along her wrist, down to her wedding ring. His lips are against her temple, so that she hears his voice over the wind and the rain drumming the roof.

"You cold?"

"I'm okay," she promises. She shifts to tuck her shoulder into him, and his arms tighten reflexively. Her hair is wet at his shirt and probably soaking him through to the skin but he doesn't complain. "Dinner will be cold, sorry."

"Not sorry," he hums, a brush of his lips in a kiss. His hand settles on top of hers at her waist.

"No? Good." She feels warm. Somehow. Skin clammy with cold rain, but warm. "We can heat it up. Maybe still eat in the living room?"

"Well, I guess that answers that."

"What was the question?" she laughs.

"Whether we have rules about bringing food and drink into the living room."

She's going to ruin the moment; she has to. Someone has to start it.

She turns her cheek into his shoulder, bracing herself against him. "Did you have rules like that for Alexis?"

"Ah, not really," he chuckles. "You know me. And you know _her_. She has always been careful."

Kate pushes her nose into his damp shirt, takes a breath. He smells musky, rain and love. "I want - our kids to have rules."

He freezes; she can practically hear his heart stop. "Kate."

"They shouldn't get - shouldn't get everything they want. Don't you think?"

"I... when did-?"

She feels him struggling behind her and she lifts, pushing back to look at him. "And respect - we'll teach our kids to respect the things they have, not take it for granted just because their parents can afford it."

He's not even blinking, just staring. "You have rules for our kids - who don't even exist?"

She swallows the barb and tucks her hair behind her ear, letting herself think. "We still - that's still possible for us, Rick. Isn't it?"

"I don't know, Kate. Is it?"

She draws her knee up on the bench and clasps it, trying to marshal a rational line of thinking. She knows she's the one who changed. She knows it.

"Because," he starts, sitting up now, "because I _know_ that it's my fault we're not there anymore. I was missing for two months and somehow I chose that-"

She reaches out and grips him by the shirt, overwhelmed by the guilt on his face. "But you _chose_ to come back. You came back, Rick."

His chin drops. "I came back. But you..."

"I'm just-" She shakes her head, regretting the words that have to be said even more as she says them. "I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"What?" he scrapes out.

"It might be the only way I know how to live anymore," she admits. "Have to have a sword hanging over my head. But something happened to you, Rick, and you couldn't come back to me. For two months."

"But I did-"

"You did. But why? Why? I just can't-" She growls and uses her free hand to rub down her face. "I have all these questions and there aren't answers. I know you've been warned off looking for answers, and that it's credible and real, but that means there's this danger out there."

"I... see that." His fingers come around her wrist and tug her hand down from her eyes. "There's always danger out there, Kate."

"But this danger might literally come home with us one day. It's my mother's case all over again, and I'm the very last person to tell you to investigate it - I am _not_ asking you to investigate it - but what if, some day, we ask that one wrong question, the one wrong dead body lands in my jurisdiction, and whoever did this to you-"

"Okay," he says quickly, wrapping both arms around her. "Okay. I get it now. I understand."

"I _want_ kids with you, Castle. I never meant to make you think it was gone for us. But I just can't see it happening - why would we do that to them? - when there's this..."

"Other shoe," he whispers. His fingers at her neck tangle in her hair. "I can't guarantee it won't come back to bite us. But neither can you with your job, you know?"

She leans into his palm a moment. "Those are two different things. My job - well, now, it's only me. There'd be... you. Our kids would have you and it would be okay."

"Well, thanks for that rosy vision of the future." The wry tone of his voice actually makes her laugh and she lifts her head, grateful for the lightness.

"I meant - it won't follow me home, whatever danger or trouble; it will end with me." _End me._ "Has it ever followed you to Alexis or your mother? It doesn't come home-"

"-but you mean this might. Whatever it is I did this summer."

She sighs, drops her hands into her lap, nodding against the frame of his palm at her cheek.

He's silent for a long time, just the sound of the rain hitting the wooden gazebo and the wind shearing against the structure. And then he sighs. "Kate, you're forgetting the main point."

"I know," she says, biting her lip. "I know you love me, and I love you, and we live one day at a time-"

"No, not that," he chuckles. His eyes are crinkled; he looks so relieved, so happy, but she's sinking fast into misery.

They were supposed to have babies. She had her life back.

"The main point, Kate, is that I came back."

She lifts her head, brow wrinkling.

"I came back - I _could_ come back. The video version of me - the one I don't remember - he said that he was trying something to get back to you, and it worked. Here I am."

"I don't see how that-"

"It means it's safe to be with you. Safe for _you_, Kate. Safe for our family."

She stares at him.

His fingers comb gently through her hair, push the ends back behind her ears. "The only reason I would _ever_ leave you, ever, would be to keep my family safe."

"Alexis-"

"No. If Alexis was in danger, I'd just lock her away somewhere while we went after the threat."

She lets out a breath and hooks her fingers at his hands, hanging on to him. "Yeah. We'd run it down." Her voice is rough, her throat closing up.

"I wouldn't leave you for something we could fix together. I'd leave to protect my family with you. Our future. If I'm back, Kate, then it's safe for us. Safe for our kids."

"Safe for us," she echoes, the question beginning to dissolve even as she speaks. "You could come back."

"I'd do anything for my family."

"That... wow... changes things," she laughs, even as tears spill out of her eyes.

His thumbs stroke over her cheeks, smearing the path of her tears, and he leans in to press his mouth to hers.

She can barely kiss him for the relief washing through her. She snakes her arms around him and comes up on her knees on the bench, pressing her body to his chest even as he laughs with her.

"Did this get fixed?" he chuckles. "Just like that?"

She groans into his mouth, pulling back to narrow her eyes at him. "Just like that? It's been _months_-"

"No, I know," he says quickly. "Not fixed overnight. But we're getting there."

"We're getting there," she says, ducking her head. "We are definitely making inroads, Castle. Even without the 12th, aren't we?"

He lets out a little breath and she's blindsided by his kiss, by the fierceness in it, the way he takes from her. She finds her back pressed into the side of the gazebo, her shirt soaking up rain on the sill.

His mouth rips away from hers, his eyes as storm-soaked as the sky. "Time to go in, Kate."

"Dinner?"

"Not unless dinner is you."

* * *

By the time they make it down to dinner, eating reheated leftovers and large glasses of wine on the floor in front of the couch, conversation has ceased. Unnecessary for the way their fingers and eyes and hearts catch.

She cleans up, loading the dish washer as he disappears onto the back deck. She starts the coffeemaker and then finishes the dishes while it brews, hand-washing the serving bowls with their painted detail work on the rims and the wine glasses that she knows he bought in Austria on his first European book tour.

All these things that now belong to her as well, the sharing of their lives. Handle with care.

Kate makes up two mugs and then heads out to join him. She steps carefully through the screen door and out onto the back deck, the wood pliant and rain-soaked beneath her shoes. The storm has finally moved on, but Castle is watching the lightning chase thunder miles down the beach.

She stands there until he senses her presence, and then she hands him a mug of coffee. His face beams with such silly appreciation that it seems almost comical, but she stays silent and sips from her own mug, letting her shoulder touch his.

His arm wraps around her, and she sinks into it, closing her eyes a moment. They've had a rough couple weeks in the middle of a lot of surprising joy, and even though they never got to the _when _of having kids, just knowing it's back on the table is pretty amazing.

It's safe for them. She can have that again.

"This is my fifth cup for today," Castle confesses. His voice is rough with caffeine and probably with the things she did to him upstairs.

"I made decaf," she admits slyly, glancing up at him.

He laughs and sighs. "I didn't even notice."

"I figured." The water is choppy out there, waves slapping and crashing to shore. Another storm front is due to hit them tomorrow, but for now the sky is beginning to clear and the stars are winking on, one by one.

The light coming on.

His arm loosens, his hand stretching broadly across her back. She likes the feel of his palm between her shoulder blades over her sweater, as if he's ushering her ahead of him, as if he's going to shepherd her, guide her, something - anything - but he'll be a part of it. He's her partner in it.

"Figured we shouldn't make it any harder to get sleep," she says. "Since lately..."

"Have I been keeping you up?" he sighs.

"No," she says. "You're not keeping me-"

"But you're up," he murmurs.

"You know how I am," she avoids, shrugging her shoulder. He seems to take it as a cue because he drops his hand from her back.

"You think it'll be better now?"

"Yeah," she says softly, pressing into his side until his arm draws around her again. Her coffee mug is cradled between them as they survey the wreckage of the beach now that the storm has passed. "Think I'll sleep hard tonight."

He tightens his arm around her shoulder and kisses her temple, and then pauses there, like he's had a thought, before nudging down to kiss above her eye. Her lids slide shut and he kisses her lashes, brushes over the bridge of her nose to kiss her other eyelid.

Her fingers grow weak around her coffee mug. He comes down to sip from her mouth, light, soft, framing her face with his hand.

He came back. He made it possible, made all of it possible. Whatever he did, whatever happened, she trusts that man who stayed away to make this night, this night and all future nights, possible for them.


	19. December 19 - Never Be Lost

_December 19 - Never Be Lost_

* * *

Well the ink in my pen ran dry  
Long before your smile  
And pages have always been blank  
Like the trees in the wild  
And the memories we made  
Will never be lost, no

-Shake, The Head and the Heart

* * *

Castle drives them into Hampton Bays in the clear winter light, the heat venting down at their feet and faces warmed by the sun. Kate has pushed the passenger seat back so that she can stretch her long legs out to the dashboard, her ankles crossed and her brown moccasin boots dusting the leather.

"I won't scratch it," she promises. "They're soft shoes."

"I don't care," he tells her. "I'd rather look at your legs anyway."

She's grinning now, little smile aimed outside the window; she liked that.

He had to charge the car yesterday in the hastily-assembled port installed in the garage; he plans on using up every cell of battery life today. He takes the back roads so that they travel the nooks and crannies of the coast, and she skips songs on his playlists, one to the next, idle listening. The road is easy and the way is straight, even in the curves, so that she looks relaxed as he drives.

"You guys do this every year?" she says, talking over a cover of 'Hallelujah.' She's played three different versions of the song and each one sounds progressively more hopeful.

"Drive the coast in winter?" he asks.

"Yeah. You and Alexis, I guess. I've never asked. I figured you guys would want to come up to the beach as often as you could."

"We don't much in winter. A few times but - well, you try arguing that the ocean is too cold to swim in with an eight year old bearing that adorable face."

He sees her smile again, lips pressed together. "She can be pretty stubborn when she wants to be. But it's hard to imagine you being the voice of reason, Castle."

"See? My point exactly. It's a poor fit." He takes the intersecting highway for Hampton Bays, glances at her. "I call dibs on outrageous fun, and you can be the one to rein us in. Deal?"

"Hey, why am _I _the bad guy?" she cries, prodding his thigh with a moccasin. Not even a hesitation from her.

He's feeling pretty pleased, gestures to himself and then to her. "We're already good cop, bad cop. It's just a natural extension of our partnership, Beckett."

"I'm lodging an official protest."

"Too late. Long-cemented. You should've been easier on me in those first few years, Kate, cause now it's impossible to change."

She chuckles softly, her fingers drumming on her knees, the key of her voice the same as the song. "Nothing is impossible..." she hums, and faintly below that, lyrics to the song: _I used to live alone before I knew you._

He's warm in the sun, in the light. He takes his hand off the wheel and slides it over her raised thigh on the dash. _There's a blaze of light in every word,_ he thinks, half-remembering lyrics to this song she keeps playing. The verses no one sings when they cover Leonard Cohen.

"So you've never taken Alexis along the coast, this isn't some Christmas tradition?"

"Maybe it is now," he shrugs. "Maybe it all can be."

_It doesn't matter which you've heard - the holy or the broken hallelujah._

* * *

The East End of Hampton Bays looks like the idyllic beach town in winter. Clapboard homes giving way to stone and whitewash, the edges tinged dark with grime. Purple daphnes and japonica line the drives, while winter jasmine is beginning to show its tight yellow buds along retaining walls and embankments.

"Oh, winter rose," Kate calls softly, shutting the car door. They've parked in what looks like is normally an empty lot that's been taken over at the holidays for tourists and locals to leave their cars. Kate is moving, fluid and fast, bundling her coat around her as she heads for the bushes growing beside a local library.

She picks two white flowers, the Christmas rose as his mother always called them. Not really in the rose family, but pure and white and star-petaled. Kate brings them back and tucks one into the top buttonhole of his coat, stroking his cheek and touching her lips to his.

"What's that for?" he says, his hand coming up to make sure the winter flower is secure.

"No reason," she answers. Smiling.

He reaches down and takes the second flower from her hand, combs it behind her ear so that the flower complements the dark of her eyes.

She nudges him towards the sidewalk, the quaint city square decorated with stringed lights and paper snowflakes, holding his hand.

* * *

They avoid the shade, stay on the sunny side of the street to soak in the light and keep warm. But the wind is bitter and it drives them inside the village shops, seeking shelter. She buys him a striped scarf in mulberry and navy, wraps it around his neck, the cashmere warm and intimate.

It's gloves for her in the next shop, though he hates to let go of the secret thrill of pushing her hand into his coat pocket to keep her fingers from going numb. He buys her gloves with those mitten covers, a jade green wool, taking careful note of all the things she handles and remarks on, proud of himself for the number of gifts he's already bought that line up with her tastes.

They huddle together outside once more, bumping shoulders and telling stories, Kate as a child, Alexis as a child, the things his mother swears happened, the things he remembers. Cousins, day trips, winter gardens, books, teddy bears, do-it-yourself projects.

Life. Their life together, their lives apart, mingling the two.

He's looking at her and she's looking back at him as they cross the street and turn a corner, and suddenly they've come upon a great crowd filing towards a community center at the tail end of the main thoroughfare. Thick coats, breath frosting in the air, murmured conversations, a strangely patient waiting.

They stand indecisive at the edge of the crowd and then, for some reason he can't explain and they don't actually verbally decide on, they step into line. It seems to be a line, and it's a all-ages mixture of people. The ragged and rough with the uptown rich, whole families, groups of older teens, a bicycle gang in their leather with helmets dangling from fingers, a herd of senior citizens ushered to the front by a handful of care workers. Scrubbed faces and smudged faces, ratty clothes and brand new.

Only when they've stood, shuffling forward from time to time, making _who knows? _eyebrows at each other, picking up the threads of conversation once more here and there where they dropped, do they realize it's a church.

Castle winces and Kate steps out of line, taking his hand, but they're so close to the wide open doors that they can smell the alluring aroma of chili and corn bread. People are no longer in a formal line, just walking en masse through the doors and winding their way through the crowd, so Kate gets separated from him by bodies, fingers pulled apart.

She's apologizing to a woman as Castle pushes his way through, he offers his own as the group of them are mashed together. Kate tries to extricate them both from the crush, but the woman is shaking her head, gesturing them inside.

It's a town meal, hot lunch for the poverty stricken, come inside and be useful, serve and smile, sit and listen. And then eat.

Kate shrugs, he shrugs back; they go inside.

* * *

His mother once said about him that he could make friends of anyone, anywhere. But it's not the truth. He makes acquaintances.

Kate makes friends.

He entices them to his side, but she wins them.

She's very good at serving in a soup kitchen. When they got inside the great hall, the woman Kate had stepped on sent them towards a volunteer coordinator who has put them to work stirring chili and setting out bowls, filling eager hands as quickly as they pass in line. There are twenty or so ladling out the food, Kate has the vegetarian version at her side of the table, and they smile and banter back and forth, drawing people into their orbit.

Circling each other, others circling them, the dance of the cosmos in a chow line.

Castle is the one to break the ice, get the isolated loners to open up, invite conversation. But Kate listens to the old man with two missing teeth as he tells his story, how he came to be homeless in Hampton Bays, how his two grown boys are good men. Kate offers a gentle squeeze of their hands as one by one they pour out woes or blessings or gratitude.

The group of teenagers they saw earlier are passing out the cornbread, the senior citizens have conquered a kingdom of tables as they hold forth with captive audience. The tattooed guys with their fauxhawks and piercings are serving those who can't stand in line.

It's really kind of miraculous.

Kate gets drawn aside by another volunteer, and then she's acting the waitress out in the crowd, mingling and serving, a comforting hand on a shoulder, the nod of her head. She keeps finding his eyes again and again, smiling at him, beaming really, this work they've stumbled into.

He gets caught up in the rhythm of ladling chili and offering cheese, a smile and nod, a word, people opening up, softening, relaxing, settling. He's pretty sure that every down-on-their-luck person for miles must know about this free meal, because they are all here.

The great hall is bursting with noise: chatter and laughter, a man yelling and needing to be calmed, a cackle, loud conversation, the din of hot lunch.

He hears from a tiny woman - she's got to be barely five foot - all about her grandchildren she's not allowed to visit, how it hurts her to her very soul, she says, but she was addicted to drugs for a long time when her daughters were girls, and she gave up her rights. She's obviously living on the street, but she's smiling and eating cornbread as she stands at his table, talking and talking.

Next is a man with two boys at his side, both smaller than they should be for their age, their faces pressed into their father's sides. The older one sticks out a fast hand and grabs a bowl, and the father touches the top of his head as if to remind him of his manners.

Castle gets a whispered_ thanks_ from the kid, echoed by the younger brother with more mouth than voice, and the man nods and shakes his hand and takes a bowl of chili for himself and the little one too.

Castle's heart is being twisted into pieces. He's going to have to write a check, a really fat check, and find someone in charge of this thing, make sure the money gets where it needs to be, see if there can't be Christmas for those boys. Better-fitting coats at least.

But as the boys pass, they say something about the car, and Castle realizes they must be living out of it, the three of them, and where their mother is, he can definitely only imagine - he's a writer, that's his job - but he can't just serve chili and say that's the end of it.

"Sir," he calls out, abandoning the line and going after them. They're getting corn bread at the next station and the boys both hunch their shoulders as if expecting the food to be taken away. "Sir, I'm-" How does he say this? "-honored to meet you. I'm Rick."

The father blinks, his hand coming up automatically. "Robert. I'm Robert. And the boys - Shawn and Willie. Willie, finger out of your nose, boy."

Willie doesn't, but Shawn jerks it out, looking the most embarrassed of them all, a little furiousness back there too. Old enough to be ashamed.

Castle reaches for his wallet in his back pocket - even though the volunteer coordinator told them not to, under any circumstances - and Robert flinches. Castle stops, arrested by that look on the man's face. Robert looks like he can't breathe, like he's suffocating under the weight of it all, and one more word, one more face of pity will be the very last straw.

If it were Castle, and he was the man who had to bring his sons to a free meal, he wouldn't be able to take it either.

"I have a business card," Castle says instead. "If you're ever in my area. I live in the city with my wife, my daughter, if you ever..."

Roberts swallows, looks from side to side, clears his throat. "I guess I can't say no to that."

This isn't going the way he wants. "I - uh - I want to find a way to wish you a merry Christmas," he says finally. "If that's not too much."

Robert still doesn't lift his eyes. His chili is in his hands. The boys are antsy, trying to slide away, eyeing the cornbread they still haven't gotten.

"Your chili is getting cold," Castle says finally. "I'll - find you after." If Robert can be found, if he wants to be found.

"Yes," the man says, a single nod. The three of them move away. He feels wrung out by the encounter, unable to help.

What is he supposed to do?

* * *

Castle goes back to the table he abandoned and finds an older gentleman has taken his place. A white beard and a head full of thick, luxurious white hair, he offers the ladle back to Castle and smiles easily - cheeks bright and, of course, merry.

Castle does a double take, then shakes his head. "Mr Claus, I presume."

The man chuckles (like a bowl full of jelly, Castle thinks), and he holds out a hand to shake. "Not quite. I'm Dan Jordan. Not Santa. Just one of the old guys at this church."

Castle laughs, shaking hands. "Dan, I'm Rick Castle. Just an old guy making a fool of himself."

"Nice to meet a fellow fool. Oh, wait, the author?" The Santa-like man raises both bushy white eyebrows. "I, uh, I heard about you on the news."

"One and the same," he admits.

"I'm sorry about your trouble," Dan sighs, shaking his head. "You're not still missing, right?"

It makes Castle laugh. First time someone has made a decent joke out of it - other than himself. "Not missing. My wife is out there, serving chili - oh, actually, here she is. Kate." He grins at her as she appears like a summoned thing; she's brushing her hair behind her ears and looking at him in concern. He gestures to the older man on his side of the table. "Kate, this is Dan. He works here."

"Dan," she says pleasantly, shaking the man's hand. "Rick, I need three bowls." _You okay? _is there unspoken and he feels a little better just for the way her eyes question him.

He's okay. He shouldn't have taken his wallet out; they told him so. Castle starts ladling out chili for her as she collects the one bowl left sitting on the paper tablecloth. "Dan," he says as he pours, "tell us about this, what's going on here. We kind of walked in on it."

"We serve hot lunch every Wednesday to those who need it. Comes out of the budget, donations, what have you. But at Christmastime, it's just - harder, you know? So we added Fridays during the month of December. It's become something of an event."

"No kidding," Kate laughs. "Oh, thanks, Castle. I gotta get these out. Bye." She leans over the table and softly kisses his cheek, giving him a look over her shoulder as she leaves him there.

"This is a pretty impressive set-up," Castle says, nodding to the full tables, the people milling around. Trying to get his mind off Robert and those boys. "A lot of people's needs are being met - and I don't just mean the food. A lot of them seem to want to talk."

Or not talk.

"I saw you with Robert. He's been here exactly once before, though I bet he ought to be here every time. Proud," the older man says thoughtfully.

Castle deflates. "I just wanted to help. I don't think I _can_."

Dan regards him for a moment. "You know, I get it. I used to be them; I am still them, really. Once you've been homeless, that never really leaves you. Pride is sometimes all you got left."

Castle casts him a startled glance. "You were homeless? You don't mind if I ask-"

"Not at all. We all have a story; I don't mind telling mine. I had a job on Wall Street - making pretty nice money - then the stock market tanked, Enron, all that, and I had no job. Spent our savings keeping us afloat for a couple months, spent the retirement the next few months just paying our exorbitant rent. We were already living above our means, and the credit card bills were astronomical."

"Ouch, I can imagine."

"Well, you can't actually feed a family of four working at Starbucks. So even though I could get jobs doing stuff like that, it didn't do any good. It was a downward spiral. Trying to be noble, I left my wife - wounded pride, I guess, couldn't be the breadwinner, told them I was messing up my kids' futures. I had gotten stuck with the beach house here, back then you couldn't offload property to save your life-"

"The beach house," Castle says, shaking his head. "That's..."

"Crazy, isn't it? Living in my beach house but I couldn't even buy bread, couldn't turn on the heat, the water. No car, sold that first. I tried everything. Finally managed to sell the house, but that money went straight to debt collectors and my divorce."

"Wow." Castle has never thought about all the people caught out by their expenditures, caught and trapped and sinking deeper. He isn't a stranger to poverty, but this man's story is such a role reversal. "That's a wild change in fortune."

"Isn't it? And it only took six months. I found my way here, living from hot meal to hot meal. Met some people, got plugged in, now I do work for the church. My son still isn't talking to me, but my daughter comes around. She's - oh, huh, look at that - she's talking to your wife. That's Kels."

Castle finds his wife immediately; he seems to always know where Kate is in a crowd. She's talking with a woman about her own age, pretty blonde hair, pleasant. "Kels," he echoes.

"Kelsey. She's married, has a kid. My granddaughter just turned two, most adorable thing to ever grace the earth." Dan is grinning widely now. "Kelsey, she escaped unscathed, as we like to joke. Not really true, but she has a good head on her shoulders. My son..."

Castle wonders, suddenly, if his own father has ever had the look on his face that Dan has now. If his own father has ever ached like that.

He can't quite imagine it. "Dan, don't give up on him," he says quickly. "Look around you - look at _me_ \- anything can happen. People come back."

Dan gives a rough laugh, nodding and bobbing his head as he collects himself. "I did some pretty stupid and hurtful things to the people I supposedly love, you know? So it'll take time. I have to be patient. It's a waiting game. Back then, when it first happened, I wasn't built for that, but I am now. People can change."

People can change. They're already changing. Anything can happen. He's needed to hear that too. Here's a former homeless Santa Claus serving chili to neighbors who need a warm place to huddle over their only good meal of the day. "You're doing good work-"

"Not me," Dan says. "All of us. We're all in this together. We're doing good work together. You too. Uh-oh, here comes another crowd. You ready?"

Castle scans the incoming knot of well-worn, weathered men and women heading their way and then he finds Kate in the crowd once more.

She's nodding and listening very seriously to the little boy Willie, who is suddenly talking a mile a minute and spraying cornbread all over the table. His father, Robert, is studying the boy with a look that is more tender than it was in line. And he's talking too. Talking to Kate.

Castle takes up the ladle and grabs another paper bowl, wielding his instruments for the day. "I'm ready."


	20. December 20 - See the Stars

_December 20 - See the Stars_

* * *

When the night falls  
I carry myself to the fortress  
Of your glorious cost

I see the stars coming down there  
Coming down there to the yard

-Star of Wonder, Sufjan Stevens

* * *

The bonfire burns high, throws pagan shadows leaping across the sand. Kate turns her back to warm her spine, the nape of her neck, the mane of her hair, closing her eyes when the wind blasts across her face.

And then he's there, his mouth to hers tasting of merlot, and she lifts her gloved fingers to his face, only slightly disappointed to feel wool instead of his five o'clock shadow.

His rumble warns of a cough, and she gentles him with a press of lips to the soft skin under his eye, opens hers to see him.

"Marshmallows," he grins, plopping down on the driftwood at her side. The ocean is thunderous before them, the fire roars in competition at her back, and the night is just beginning to sink over the sea.

"You get the chocolate?"

He lifts the bag. "Of course."

She grins back, bumps shoulders with him. "Kinda wish Alexis and your mother were here."

"You take that back," he gasps.

She laughs, and somehow the sound is both filling her chest and also the dunes, so that it escapes to the sky and shines on them. Laughter. His is a wonderful baritone in harmony with her own. Like a song.

"I take it back," she gives in. "But someday. I want to do this again and again."

"Make s'mores in the dead of winter?"

"It can be our winter solstice tradition - tomorrow really. The coldest, darkest day of the year," she offers. It _is_ an offering, a sacrifice. Willing to be miserable in the wind, though her back is burning so close to the flames. Her nose is frozen so she shuffles around to face the fire. Now they are sitting opposite, Castle looking out at the cold ocean, Kate curling towards the heat.

"In the bleak mid-winter," he murmurs.

"Frosty wind made moan," she continues, reciting from memory. "Earth stood hard as iron. Water like a stone."

"Snow on snow," he adds. "That's the part that stuck with me. Snow on snow."

"Someone made it into a song," she admits. "It was in a tv show once. A Christmas special. Snow on snow. Snow on snow. In the bleak midwinter, long ago."

Castle sighs, his body broad and cutting the wind. "Earth stood hard as iron."

"It doesn't stay that way, you know," she murmurs, leaning her cheek against his coat. His shoulder is strong, the wool of his coat heated by the fire. She could fall asleep - or she could jump up and run full tilt down the beach into the dark.

"Summer hasn't been much nicer to us," he says then.

She sighs, reaches for the bag of marshmallows and chocolate he left by the log. The graham crackers are on her other side, but suddenly she doesn't want to go through all that trouble. She wants it to be easy.

"Turn around with me," she tells him, pushing on his shoulder. He moves slowly, but he comes to face the fire with her.

"Want a s'more?" he says, taking the bag from her fingers.

She nods wordlessly and he begins to unfold the roasting stick - specially bought ages ago for his and Alexis's s'mores making. Castle builds the chocolate and graham crackers, extends the marshmallow to the flames, doing it all while she watches.

"Crispy or just barely melted?"

"You choose."

"Huh."

She smiles. "Didn't expect that answer, did you?"

"Not one bit," he chuckles. The firelight on his face is beautiful. She twines her arm through his. It's too warm here, bitter cold at her back.

"Reminds me of our honeymoon," she smiles.

He laughs then, the sound crackling up like the embers from the fire. "No snakes here. Well, except for one."

She startles with laughter, burying her face in his shoulder to keep from snorting, a delicious burn in her belly that has nothing to do with a bonfire.

"Didn't expect _that_ answer, did you?" he says smugly.

"And _how_ did I miss that one coming?" she says, still fizzling with amusement.

"I really don't know. Could see that one from a mile away."

"Hush and finish my s'more."

"As you wish," he murmurs, a wink in his voice if not in his eye, and she settles back down at his side.

Their silence doesn't feel like silence when the flames pop and crackle through the driftwood piled high, when the ocean waves give their repeated war cries against the shore.

Beyond the flames are the stars, somehow brighter and more penetrating than they have ever been. Tomorrow is the darkest night of the year but it feels like the universe is being revealed, being turned inside out on display.

Castle takes her hand from the crook of his arm, tugs off her glove. She gets what he's doing, pulls her other glove off as well. He's spreading out her fingers, and she goes still, waiting. Castle carefully places her s'more on her palm.

She smiles, takes his gift in her other hand, warm and melting and the scent of fire and chocolate.

"Can we do this always?" she says softly. "For winter solstice. Come out here and make s'mores and..." She doesn't have the words to explain, and she trails off into silence.

"Pay our respects," he says then. "For the sacrifices of winter."

She nods, thumb catching the melting chocolate. "For our family. Whatever it looks like, whatever shape it takes, it'll be with you, Rick, and that makes me - blessed. It was a near thing."

His arm wraps around her and holds her against him, his rumbling chest trying to get something out, but he has no words either.

After tomorrow, the days will grow. So will their family, whether they have kids or not, because their hearts are full.

Because her heart is full, and it is spilling out over everything like stars tumbled over the dark sky.


	21. December 21 - Find Your Way

_December 21 - Find Your Way_

* * *

When the air gets colder,  
Don't let your heart turn to stone  
Let the weight fall off your shoulders,  
And know in the end you'll find your way home

-'Don't You Worry, Love' by Oh, Honey

* * *

"This car..." she sighs.

Castle grins. "Yes?" His turn to drive; it's really rather amazing. The Tesla handles so well that he doesn't want to go home. He's taking his time on back roads and winding highways.

"I love this car. Can this be my Christmas present too?"

"You want me to return all your other gifts?"

She laughs. "No," she says slyly. "You got me... lots?"

"Lots."

"No, you didn't."

"I did."

"I counted two under the tree before we left," she snorts.

"Ha! You _care_." He snags her hand from the center console, squeezing her fingers. "You say you don't, but you care how many."

"No, I just... hmm."

"I know," he smiles. "I like to buy you things, so it evens out."

"Don't set up these really crazy expectations, Castle."

"No, no expectations," he promises. "I'm really - you know - finding joy in the everyday. That's been a gift."

"It has, hasn't it?" she hums. "Hey, you know what Dan told me?"

"Dan the guy from Hot Meals?"

"Yeah."

"Uh-oh, what did he tell you?"

Kate laughs again, draws her feet up into the seat. "When I told him that I had some extra money coming in this month, he said that you had already written him a check for that same amount."

He can feel his face flush.

She brings his hand up and kisses his knuckles. "My paycheck for the month," she whispers. He can hear her only because the car is so quiet, so soundless. Her mouth follows the line of his fingers and she turns his hand to kiss his palm. "I gave him the check anyway."

He smiles, catching his breath. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Should you have talked to me about it, should I have told you what I was doing? Or are we - do we just keep doing what we think is right?"

"And possibly duplicating our efforts?" he murmurs.

"Does it matter?"

"I don't think it does," he offers. "What harm is there in giving away a little more than expected? I bought myself a car without telling you - and maybe I shouldn't have? - but I wanted it to be a surprise."

"I know how much money you make," she says, another soft kiss to his palm so that her chin settles over his hand. "I know it won't break the bank to give. But is it stupid of us?"

"You know, you gave him your whole salary for the month, which was all you had to live on. I gave him out of the extra that I knew was coming in. Your faith, Kate, that's a gift too."

"My faith?"

"Your faith in me."

She's quiet for a long time, and he doesn't know if the conversation is over or if it's just begun.

She gave Dan at Hot Meals the _whole_ of her paycheck, while Castle just skimmed the cream off the top. And yes, the loft rent is in his name and her apartment is being taken care of by the cousin, and of course, he would never deny her anything, but she still put herself in a position of weakness, relying on the money he's made.

It's a gift, and it feels precious to him because she did it so thoughtful of others, so heedless of herself, so trustingly.

The walls are down. Maybe they were shabby constructs anyway, maybe all they needed was some time to drag away the layers, find each other again.

* * *

She's singing _I Dreamed a Dream_ softly all on her side of the car, her voice barely rising above the music coming through the stereo-quality speakers. He catches tremulous notes, a wistfulness that begins to thread them into a cocoon.

And then she sighs, turns down the soundtrack. "You know, Maddie and I were crazy about _Les Miserables_. We bought Broadway tickets when we were fourteen - sixth row, I kid you not - and I remember we paid about seventy or eight dollars a piece. That seemed like so much money then."

"Had you seen it before?"

She smiles. "No, we read the book."

"No way," he gapes. "The book is hundreds of pages long. It's sometimes _two _books."

"I know, I know, but my grandmother had read it."

"That does not at all explain why _you_ read it."

"She dropped that bombshell very calmly into one of our rare visits to the family. My mother's family," she adds, a dwelling on it that he knows comes more from the more illustrious side to her parentage than to thinking about her mother. The Houghtons.

"It made you nuts that your grandmother read that fat book and you hadn't - didn't it?" he guesses.

She laughs. "Probably that exactly. I convinced Mad, and we started this _Les Mis_ obsession - we wore those t-shirts with the waif's face on the front from the playbill, you know? We tore them up like the French revolutionary flag and wore black spandex and thought we _were_ the rebels."

"Fourteen year old Beckett should not sound so hot."

Her hand catches his. "It's kind of amazing, Castle. How completely different a person I was back then. What was important to me. Being a revolutionary, fighting the fight."

"Not so different to you now," he murmurs. "Still hot."

She's smiling; he knows she is. She always does that when she's secretly pleased to be complimented by him.

"Tell me then," he offers. "How different?"

"Just - I don't even know how to explain. My mother was murdered, Castle, only five years later. Five years is nothing, and everything, and my whole world changed. Reformed. I can't begin to imagine who I would've turned out to be if that had never happened."

"Do you think so very different?"

"Yes."

He frowns, tries to find something to say that doesn't wind up sounding like, _I'm glad she died._ He's not, but it led her here. To this.

Her fingers squeeze around his over the center console. "Not that it matters. Funny thing is, I told that to my therapist and you know what he said?" She shakes her head. "He said, none of us are who we were."

"You don't think that's true?" he says. "I think it's true. I know it's true. People change. Everyone changes. Isn't that the point of human existence? Evolution."

"This is micro, not macro, and on a scale so very micro that it's not even beneficial to the survival of humankind."

"I think you're wrong. And besides, who cares about the macro? Are we really in this for the survival of mankind? I'm talking about our individual lives, here and now. The point of the experiment is to make us _more_. Don't you want that? I do. I want to be more than I was, more than that cowering fourteen year old who didn't know what to do with his hands, and more than the thirty-four year old who ran roughshod over your feelings without even knowing it. Being around you taught me how to mean it when I apologized_._"

Her fingers lace through his but silence reigns over the car. He doesn't divert his eyes from the road to look at her, but he can sense her studying him.

"Yes," she says finally. "You're right. The point is to be more - oh, _cows_."

Castle barks out a laugh, head swiveling fast to her, back to the road, but, yes, there are cows. Chewing their cud close to the split rail fence alongside the highway.

"You've never played, have you?" she says in a rush. "That's one cow for me. None for you."

"Cows?" he asks, bewildered.

"Cows on my side. The game. You've never played with Alexis?"

"Played... what?"

"Cows. On my side," she says more slowly. She's perched on the edge of her seat now and that thoughtful, introspective, regretful Kate is completely gone. It's kind of fascinating.

"Cows on my side," he repeats. "Well, no, can't say that I have."

"Oh, it's the best. So simple. Every time a field of cows passes on your side, you get a point. Whoever has the most cows at the end of the trip wins."

"I have to count all those cows-"

"No, not the cows. It's the field that counts as one. But here's the thing. If you get a cemetery or grave yard on your side, you lose all your cows. Back to zero. They die."

"Die of what?"

"I don't know, Castle, cow plague. Whatever. Let's play."

He glances pointedly out at the blank, featureless expanse. Dead winter grass, bare stripped trees, two-lane highway.

"Okay, so it's not a fast game. It's supposed to take the whole trip, an on-going game. You'll see. This is a good stretch to play on. I'm beating you, by the way. I've got one cow."

He lifts an eyebrow, finally looks over at her. "Kate Beckett, I think you've just made this up."

* * *

"Ha! Cows on my side, cows on my side," he crows. "That's twelve to your measly two."

"I hate this game."

"You _adore_ this game," he gloats. "This is a perfect stretch of road to play on. We-"

She claps her hand over his mouth, probably levels him with a death stare but he's suddenly extremely busy keeping the car on the road. So busy. Really, he can't look away.

"Oh, there's Tennessee," she says, dropping her hand from his mouth to pull out their notebook. She writes down the state in their short list of license plates from all over the country, another game she introduced to distract him from just how _much_ he is winning at Cows.

"State License Plates is kind of a pointless game on a trip like this. Cows is a much better game."

"Oh, whatever, you were completely into this game when I was winning Cows."

"But now _I'm_ winning Cows, so-"

"Of course." She slides the notebook back into the recessed compartment in the center console, lays her fingers over his forearm. Trailing touch, up and down, and whatever they say to each other, however competitive it gets, there's still this, the solid foundation of them.

"How many times have you seen _Les Mis_ on Broadway?" he says, going back to their earlier conversation.

"Four."

"That's pretty good."

"What's the one you've seen the most?"

"Oh, ew," he mutters. "I saw _Twelfth Night_ thirteen times."

"Ew? Why did you - oh, your mother."

"Exactly," he mutters.

"How old were you?"

"About eleven. Old enough to stay home alone, but she was in a phase. Had to go every night and applaud, throw flowers on the stage, be her cheering section."

"Oh, no," Kate laughs. He's glad someone can laugh about it. He remembers her coming home from the cast party with one of the lead actors, remembers being so furious with her, the anger and betrayal twisting up inside until they were the same.

A boy isn't supposed to be his mother's stand-in. He wonders if this is the kind of thing Kate meant before, how he doesn't say everything either, how there are stories that don't get told, walls for both of them.

"I - uh - she started seeing a guy from the production," he starts, wondering how to do this. It's been so long now, he's been reconciled to his mother's ways for decades. It's not a thing, but maybe this is what Kate is supposed to know about him. "I'm not trying to tell tales on her, you know Mother-"

A squeeze of his arm. "I know, Rick."

"After the cast party, the lead - I still remember his name, Decklin, like something out of a soap opera. She brought Decklin home with her that night - early morning by that time - and I was up and waiting."

"You were? At eleven?"

He nods slowly, feels her hand slide into his. "I was - enraged is the only word for it. How she laughed so - brightly. It rang false to me. And then, in the middle of wanting to throttle Decklin, I had this crazy moment of clarity. I can even remember the exact clothes I was wearing and how our apartment looked, I can remember where I was standing."

"What was your clarity?" she murmurs.

"I'm not her man. Not supposed to be the only man in her life. It's not supposed to be like that. So I - quit trying. Life went so much easier for me after that."

Her fingers tighten. "It must have been hard, single mom, trying to be both parents. Taking on all of it. Hard to know how to be a two-person family."

"I was never - it wasn't like she-"

"I know," Kate murmurs. "You learned from her mistakes. And Alexis is all the better for it."

And now he's leached the fun right out of their car.

He sighs. "Yeah, I think that's why I hung on to Meredith so long, despite - oh, _cows!_ Ha, I am killing it, Beckett."

Kate laughs so hard she has to let go of his hand and wipe tears from her eyes, her laughter rich and tumbling and breathless, her breath itself a laugh, humming, fingers wet as she skims the joy off her cheeks.

"Oh, God, I thought - thought you were - just - calling Meredith a cow, and I-"

"Ohhh," he realizes. "No, I saw a whole pasture of cows."

"Right, right," she wheezes. "Cows. I got it now."

"That makes thirteen."

"As many times as you saw _Twelfth Night_."

"Just as many," he grins. And then it comes out of the darkness again, the huge black bodies, the line of fence - and beyond something else, maybe another pasture, definitely more. "Ha! Cows again-"

"No-"

"Oh wait-"

"-those are _horses_," she says, and then as the car keeps going and the next plot of land springs up out of the darkness- "And! Oh my God, a cemetery! A cemetery - you _lose_. All your cows. Your cows are _dead_," she exults, practically making the car rock back and forth as she glories it over him. "Castle, _now_ who's killing it?"

"You. All my fun. _Killing it_."

"Yes," she crows, pumping her fist. "Just like your cows. And here's our turn for the interstate leading to the tunnel in _five_ miles, you are _finished._"

"This is so not fair," he growls. "A cemetery at the _end_ of all this and now you win with a paltry _two cows_?"

"This is the best game ever."

"This is the worst game ever."

"Oh, this is glorious," she raptures. Her arms lift; she lowers one to the back of his seat and runs her fingers through the hair at his nape, leans in and kisses his cheek. "Absolutely perfect. Castle, I adore you. This was the best. I win."

And now, of course, he feels like the Grinch whose heart bursts the scales, growing fatter with love. _She's_ glorious. And he wins. He totally wins.

Who cares about Cows? He wins at life.


	22. December 22 - Peace You Feel

_December 22 - Peace You Feel_

* * *

Go straight to the place where you first lost your balance  
And find your feet with the people that you love...  
the peace that you feel is real life

-Real Life (Angel), Elbow

* * *

She spends an inordinate amount of time composing her email to him on her phone. Probably more than she should, considering they got a body over the weekend and she's playing catch-up this morning.

Still, she wants it to be exactly right.

She has to do a fast search on pinterest, starting with Alexis's boards because his daughter is always pinning something about do-it-yourself projects and holiday wreaths and relief aid projects to Ghana. She finds a graphic that works exactly right for what she's trying to do and Kate attaches the image to her email, sending it before she can think twice.

_Will you go out with me? Circle yes or no._

* * *

Kate sinks down in her desk chair and ignores the boys giving her snickering comments.

Captain Gates just gave her a reprimand for not being 'on task' - like she's in kindergarten and can't sit still long enough to complete her coloring page.

Well, okay, she basically feels like that. Castle hasn't emailed her back, but she thinks that's only because he's writing. He puts his phone in the other room and purposefully doesn't turn on his wi-fi on the laptop unless he really needs to look something up. She's not concerned, she's just antsy.

She has reservations at the restaurant and even a dress in mind and she needs to buckle down and start working or she'll be late to her own party.

Her phone rings and her heart jumps; Kate scrambles to answer, her smile stretching her face when she sees his ID on the screen.

"Hey, you," she hums.

"You check your email yet?" he asks. His voice sounds strange, like her connection is bad and his words are cracking.

"I thought I-" Kate refreshes again but the server must be slow. Still nothing.

"Pretty cute there, Detective."

Ah, finally. Refreshed. She opens his email and grins widely at his circled answer.

_Yes._

* * *

A text from him when she's in the zone, but she doesn't read the whole thing, just sees it's from Castle and keeps going, making calls from the phone on her desk. She has this feeling it's close, it's right here, she just has to dig a little deeper into these financials to get her man.

Ryan distracts her after that, jogging to her desk with notes from his follow-up interview with the wife, and it takes another hour before she remembers the text from Castle waiting on her phone.

She unlocks the screen and reads: _Small snag in tonight's plans. I'm deathly ill._

Kate jumps up from her desk and races to the break room, already calling him back.

* * *

When Kate arrives home, she still has faint hopes of a fancy dress and a night on the town. She doesn't quite realize just how much she wants it until she walks slowly down the hall, coat on and bag over her shoulder, and finds Castle asleep in bed.

She sighs, shoulders slumping, and lifts the bag over her head, eases out of her coat. She lays them both on the foot of the bed and sinks down to the mattress, unzips her boots as she studies him.

Flat on his back, breathing noisy, face flushed.

She leaves her shoes there on the floor and crawls up the bed to look at him, sinking back to sit on her heels. She can feel the heat of him from here.

Nope, not going out tonight.

Kate leans in and touches his forehead, the flop of his bangs at the back of her hand so soft. She presses the inside of her wrist to his skin and sighs.

Fever.

Leaving a light kiss on his brow, she slides off the bed and takes her coat and bag, heading back to the living room. No dinner date, but she'll pick up a few things for him while he sleeps.

They'll have a quiet night in.

* * *

Kate places everything on the breakfast tray and carries it through the living room and to the hall, heading back for their bedroom. She places it on the bedside table, nudging the lamp out of the way to make room.

He's still asleep flat on his back, but she notices the bottle of cough syrup is on the table, a measuring cup with sticky red residue. He must have woken up while she was out and taken some. He's used to being on his own, used to doing it all for himself, just like she is.

Kate sits at his hip and lays her hand on his chest, waits a moment to feel him breathing under her hand.

Rough sounds, the vibrations travel through her palm.

"Rick."

She feels the twitch of awareness move through him, the shift from too-light sleep to consciousness again. His eyes open.

"Hey, there. How you feel?"

His mouth works and his eyes blink slowly and then he lifts his arm and knocks his hand into hers as he attempts to circle her wrist. He hangs on to her a moment, Kate waiting for him to come awake, and then his head turns and he looks at her.

"Solve the case?" he croaks.

"Oh, babe, you sound bad," she whispers, leaning in over him. His eyes are bloodshot, but she kisses his forehead and combs the hair back from his face. "Case is almost there. Getting the last of it buttoned up for the DA before we make the arrest."

He nods, throat working but no words coming out.

Kate lowers her hand and lays it on his chest again. "I bought soup - chicken noodle from the deli. You feel like eating?"

He rumbles something that ought to be an answer, but it devolves into a thick burr of a cough, so fierce that he has to roll onto his side and bury it against his arm.

Kate waits, rubbing his back until he sinks down into the mattress again. After a moment, he struggles to sit upright, leaning against the headboard, his face tilted up and his eyes closed.

"Might have to sleep sitting up," he says, words cracking. "Keep coughing. Wake myself up."

"You take the cough medicine?" she asks as she stands to get the bowl of soup.

"Mm, yeah."

"Not helping?"

"Not so far."

She lays the tray over his lap and he kinda just sits there a moment, like he doesn't know what to do with his hands. Kate presses her lips together to smother a smile - it's not funny, but it's a little cute - and she reaches in and opens the bottle of water for him.

"Thanks," he coughs.

She stands up again and brushes her fingers through his hair, intending to head back to the kitchen and get dinner for herself, but Castle sighs and leans his head into her touch.

She stops there, her thigh against the edge of the mattress, cradling his head in her palm. His eyes are closed, his breathing slow, and somehow he's an entirely different person like this. Stripped down.

"Rick?"

"Sorry," he slurs, struggling up again. But she catches his head in both of her hands and rubs at his ears, ducks in to press her lips to his forehead.

"Don't be sorry," she murmurs. "It's my fault you're sick anyway, dragging you out into a storm."

He chuckles, but it rumbles and catches and he's coughing again. She backs up, giving him room to avoid the soup and press his mouth into the crook of his arm again.

She waits until he settles and then she scratches her fingers at his scalp. "What do you need, Castle?"

"Nothing. Just tired. Be okay."

"You must really be sick," she murmurs, lifting an eyebrow at him. "Where's all your melodrama?"

He gives another little chuffing breath, laughter in it somewhere, and she winks back at him, dropping her hand and stepping away from the bed. But he catches her by the wrist and places a kiss to her palm.

"Sorry about our date. Rain check?"

She smiles, shaking her head. "No more rain for you. Eat your soup. I'll be back to join you in a moment."

* * *

She peels out of her work clothes, one at a time, takes a shower while he's asleep slumped over. They watched a little television, Castle dozing, they ate side by side, they had a quiet night with a little shop talk. She has an early arrest in the morning and calling it a day is probably a good idea for her too.

When she gets out of the shower, she takes her time rubbing lotion into her skin, lets her hair dry naturally. She'll scrape it back into a bun in the morning anyway; she has a court appearance at around ten.

Kate draws her pajamas on, finds herself yawning as she opens the bathroom door, the cooler bedroom bringing goose bumps up on her arms.

Castle is gone.

She pauses, eyebrows knitting together, but the bed is empty. Sheets rumpled, his pillow gone, the television remote set on the bedside table.

Kate sighs, pads bare-footed towards the office, moves through the empty room, out into the living room, still looking for him. He's not on the couch, so she heads for the stairs, mounts them quickly, toes cold against the steps. She has an idea what he's trying to do.

When she gets to the hall, she hears him coughing, that rumbling and aching sound. She pushes open the guest room door and leans against the door frame.

Castle is struggling with the bed covers, trying to tug them down, his pajama pants hanging low on his hips, having to stop every few seconds to cough into his arm.

"Rick?"

He turns around, sees her there. "Just... going to bed."

"Up here?"

"I'll keep you up," he says. A cough bursts out of his chest and he winces, pressing a fist against his sternum and rubbing. "You have a five a.m. wake up call."

"Yes, but we're not doing that," she says, pushing off the door frame. She goes past him to take his pillow, ignores his rumbling protest as she heads out of the guest room. "You're coming back to bed."

"Kate, it's a nice gesture, but you're not going to get any sleep."

She pauses in the hall to glance at him over her shoulder. "I'll get about four hours - until your cough medicine wears off - and then we'll do it all over again. I know what I'm in for. I've had less sleep."

She moves off down the hall and then she slowly hears him following.

* * *

Back in bed again, Castle sitting up against the headboard to keep from coughing, Kate lays down on her side and tucks the pillow up under her chin. She watches him for a moment, his exhaustion in every line, and then she closes her eyes.

He coughs and it shakes the whole bed.

Kate opens her eyes.

"Sorry," he groans, bowing forward as the coughing fit takes him again.

She waits until he's straightened up again, and then she snakes her hand out to his thigh, curls over the material of his pajama pants. "Don't be sorry." She smiles and tugs a little on his pants. "And don't try to hold it in, just makes it worse."

He grunts something, surprise or acceptance, doesn't matter. His head leans back against the headboard and he sighs. "Why you doing this, Kate? Gonna be a miserable night."

"Misery loves company," she shoots back.

His eyes shift to hers; he really does look miserable.

Kate moves closer, wraps her arm around his waist, hugging him as gently as she can. "I know it wasn't in the vows, but I thought sickness and health was kind of understood."

Castle drapes his arm around her shoulders, his cheek coming down heavily to the top of her head. "Don't think that's what it meant, but I'm too tired to argue."

She finds herself grinning, lifts her head up to dislodge him, kissing the rough patch of scruff at his jaw. "I win."

He laughs, the short bark of weakened lungs, but his arm tightens around her. "Yeah, you win."

She spent too many nights without him.

* * *

It's a miserable night.

But she wouldn't kick him out just for sleep.

Not when, after a particularly draining coughing spell, he curls up on his side and presses his face into her collarbones, like he just can't help himself.

Kate cradles him, his wordless plea, traces designs on his back with her fingers until his body relaxes again.


	23. December 23 - Story to Tell

_December 23 - Story to Tell_

* * *

I walked home smiling, I finally had a story to tell  
In the woods one Christmas Eve, waiting

-Sixteen, Maybe Less, Iron and Wine

* * *

Kate leaves him with a cool kiss and his body sinks into the mattress, as if her leaving signals a new day and the release of his lungs, and he finally falls into restful sleep.

He wakes around ten with Alexis peering down at him, rubs his hand down his grimy face, tries to shake off sleep. "Hey, pumpkin."

"Kate said you were sick. I would have come home," his daughter says. "Taken care of you."

Has he done to his daughter what his mother did to him? "Kate was here," he reminds her gently, his voice rumbling with the hard 'k' of the name.

"Well, I'm here now. And I might be going out later tonight, but I'll here until after Christmas, of course."

"Of course," he smiles, shifting up in bed to sit. "Christmas Eve dinner and presents?"

"Definitely here for that," she grins back. "Can't wait. And happy Christmas Eve eve. You feeling any better? Not going to ruin our holiday, are you?"

He laughs, being careful with the sound so that it won't dislodge anything in his chest. "Who, me? No way. It's on. Now go make me brunch, baby bird. I've got to shower."

* * *

After waffles and fruit, Alexis curls up at his side on the couch and forces him to watch Hallmark Christmas movies with her. He falls asleep about four minutes in and he knows that was her plan all along.

When he wakes, she's drawing a blanket up over him. "Hey," he mumbles, catching her wrist. "You leaving?"

"No, just thought I'd cover you up."

"I'm awake," he croaks out. His neck has a crick in it, his body feels heavy. "How was the movie?"

"I switched it over to 'Kick-Ass' on HBO," she smiles.

"I kind of hate you a little," he mutters. She sinks back down at his side, and he sees she's got a mug of coffee in her hands. "You make me any?"

"No caffeine for you. Kate said you coughed all night and you should sleep."

"Oh, _Kate_ said, huh?"

Alexis suddenly and inexplicably goes still.

"Alexis?"

His daughter draws her knees up onto the cushions and balances her mug on top in a move that is so eerily similar to Kate's own that it makes the hairs stand up on his arms.

"Kate talks to me," she says then.

"That's good," he offers immediately. Always ready to reinforce their bonding. Even if it's ganging up on him.

Alexis tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "It's habit. Leftover from this summer."

"It's not just habit. It's because she wants you guys to be-"

"It's because she made you a promise," Alexis interrupts. "A lot of different promises, that's what she told me, but it means we're stuck with each other."

He winces. "That sounds-"

"She told me that," Alexis keeps going. "Those are her words."

"I'm sure Kate didn't mean them to sound quite so bad," he tries. His lungs are irritated, he can feel things shifting around.

"Does it sound bad?" his daughter asks, her blue eyes so naive on his. "I didn't think so. She didn't either. I guess if you'd been there, you..." Alexis falters, eyes dropping away. "That was the point though. You were gone."

Castle sighs and lays a heavy hand on his daughter's raised knee, shakes it a little as she holds her coffee mug to her chest. Curling in, protective body language.

"But I'm here now."

As if coming to a decision, Alexis straightens up and puts her mug on the coffee table, sits on the edge of the couch, her hands pressed to her knees. "You know when she told me that? We were in Atlantic City, getting coffee in the dead of night."

"Atlantic City?"

Alexis nods. "You know she used to call me - twice a day. Clockwork. Every day. No matter where she was. _Did you eat breakfast? Have you talked to anyone other than Gram? Did you get outside the loft today_?"

"She did?" Castle gapes.

"She didn't stay here a whole lot; she was at her apartment, I think. Or at the precinct. Or - she did a lot strange trips, meeting people, searching for - anything. But she didn't forget us. She was always on the phone. Follow up calls, she said. _If you bug someone, they remember you._"

Kate. Working his case, his disappearance. Every day, intense.

His daughter hunches her shoulders. "I always knew - so long as Kate kept going, then we'd find you. I never, for a moment, believed otherwise. Because she's just so..."

"Relentless," he whispers.

"Yeah. She was going to find you. And then I got my schedule for this semester in my email and I lost it. I took the car and drove to the Hamptons. Drove all over the coast, up and down, in and out of the resorts and the stupid cabanas and the little towns. The police called her."

His throat is closing up and it's not the cough.

Alexis presses her hands between her knees, chin tucked into her chest. "Kate came and found me, followed me a few more miles and then I pulled over. She opened my door and pushed me over and I just - let her. I crawled into the passenger seat and we left her car on the side of the interstate."

"Oh, Alexis."

Her head comes up, but her eyes are clear. She gives him a half-hearted shrug. "Gram had called me a few times, telling me to come home, that it wouldn't do any good, and I eventually quit taking her calls. But Kate just drove."

"How far did you guys get?"

"Montauk to Atlantic City." Alexis rubs her palms together. "Not once did she tell me to stop. She never said stop."

Her eyes are brimming now and Rick opens his arms, draws her into his chest for a tight squeeze. His little girl's arms come around his neck and she clings to him for a heartbeat before letting go, drawing back.

Alexis swipes at her eyes and gives him a watery smile. "It was a long drive. We were mostly silent. We were in Atlantic City getting coffee, and I had my phone out mapping the drive and I was looking at the whole - just the whole interstate system and how far we had to go. How far..."

His daughter in Atlantic City for a pit stop, poring over a map, just breaks his heart. And Kate. Not saying a word against her, and of course not. Kate would never say stop.

Kate would never stop.

"I told her she didn't have to keep driving. That I'd do it alone. I wanted to drop her off at the airport and just - her job or at least go get her car back in Bay Shore. That's when she said it. _We're stuck with each other. We're the only ones who understand."_

Alexis rubs her arms and gives him a rather cheerful smile, flipping a switch somewhere, somehow, and coming out of it. He can't quite switch gears so fast, his heart has been trampled.

"Alexis. I..."

"Oh, no, I didn't tell you that to make you sad," she says quickly. She's fussing over the blanket. "It's not sad. It was really great. I knew it was going to be okay, sitting in that coffee shop. I just meant, Kate does that to you. I used to almost hate her-"

"_Hate_ her-"

"Well, I mean, for you, Dad. I hated her for you, but that's because you're so - so - gregarious. Warm, and funny, and outgoing. And Kate isn't any of those things - or well, I didn't think she was. You felt unevenly matched, almost like... anyway, that's not the point. The point is that Kate is just _reserved_. Intense. I wasn't used to that. You're demonstrative and she's not, but that doesn't mean it's not there, you know?"

Castle smiles softly. "Yeah. I know."

"She does not stop. Does not let _go_. We're stuck with her. Dad, I don't think you could divorce Kate even if you _tried."_

He huffs at her in indignation, but it starts a rattling in his chest that is hard to suppress. The cough breaks free and takes over, making him curl up. When he's been bowed over, fist pressed into that place in his lungs, for longer than he'd care to admit, Alexis stands up and gestures towards the couch.

"Lay down, rest. You still sound bad. Want some cough drops? Kate said she left a bag on the counter. And I think we have Nyquil too."

Conversation is over, and his daughter moves around the couch to find him cough drops, fluidly dodging whatever attempts he might have made to probe her about this summer.

He leans his head back against the couch cushions and closes his eyes.

She took care of his kid, just as he asked once upon a time. She took care of Alexis in the only way that mattered - made her feel not alone, made her feel _sane_ in the middle of that insanity.

He needs to find his phone. He's going to text her something really great to let her know how much he - how it just - guts him out.

And fills him up.

He loves her.

But he falls asleep before he can unlock his phone.


	24. December 24 - Now It's Light

_December 24 - Now It's Light_

* * *

It's okay to have scars  
They will make you who you are...  
You pulled me out of the dark and now it's light

-Christmas TV, Slow Club

* * *

"I get out of here at two," she tells him over the phone. Castle still sounds raspy, but she thinks he slept better last night. They both did; maybe the previous restless night primed him just enough that the cough medicine knocked him right out. Six hours straight.

"You get off at two? Seriously? How'd you swing that?"

She glances around the bullpen, rattling empty. "I'm just that good." She pushes the phone against her ear, holding it in place with her shoulder so she can continue to enter data on her computer. "Actually, Espo is here - he'll take lead if we get anything - and I've got to be in for my shift tomorrow."

"Wow, two. I hadn't planned on Christmas Eve dinner being ready by then."

"It doesn't need to be ready," she hastily assures him. "You're sick, babe. Don't do that."

"No, no. I got it under control. Going smoothly. I was just shooting for around five or six."

"Well, you'll get my help for a few hours. How's that?"

"Sounds pretty good actually."

She beams, even though he can't see it. "I'm looking forward to it."

"You are?" he squeaks. "Well, now, it's a Christmas miracle."

"Believe it, Castle. And hey, you sound a little better - except for when you're squawking at me."

"Squawking," he barks, sounding indignant but mostly just croupy. He coughs, and she waits him out, and he chokes something that sounds like, _maybe you're not wrong._

"Don't work too hard, Rick. I'm serious. Dinner doesn't have to be fancy. We can order Chinese. We have time to build our traditions, you know?"

"No. I don't know. This is happening. Two o'clock, Beckett."

She sighs, but really, Castle Christmas traditions are distracting and loud and confusing enough to make her forget for the day who isn't here with her any longer. In some ways, she _needs _Castle to be over the top and do too much. Her parents celebrated Christmas on the day, not on Christmas Eve, and it's actually refreshing - exciting even - to have this anticipation all day long for tonight's traditions.

"Two o'clock," she promises him. "Leave me a few things to do, would you, Castle?"

"We'll see. Uh-oh, package just got delivered. I gotta go."

He ends the call and she's left staring at her computer screen.

Well, she'll find out at two.

* * *

When Kate finally pushes open the door to the loft, Castle is wearing a Santa Hat and a big red apron made to look like Santa's suit. She has to laugh, and he startles up from the pot he's stirring.

"Hey, Santa," she purrs.

Castle's eyebrows dance enticingly - and then the kitchen scents fill her lungs.

"Oh, you made wassail?" she sighs, drawing her coat off. Castle hurries around the island to help her, and she pauses to let him, just for the feel of his hands at her shoulders and the spiced heat of his body behind her.

When he speaks, it's right at her ear. "New this year; we'll see how it goes."

He brushes his fingers at her neck, some reason she doesn't know, and then draws off her scarf as well, moving to hang up her coat. She watches the easy movement of his arms, the breadth of his chest and shoulders as he has his back to her. He's so - broad.

Stronger than he lets on. When they first met, she pegged him as just the writer, the annoying playboy, so metrosexual that the more rugged aspects of his _maleness_ just never quite registered until - well, until a thunderstorm found her soaked to the skin at his loft and he attacked her neck and drove her back against his door.

A few words and she can unleash that raw power all over again.

"Kate?"

He's looking at her, gentlemanly offering his arm for her. She takes it, her fingers curling on to his forearm as she steps out of her heels. Has this become their ritual? Since when? He's been helping her shed her detective persona the moment she's stepped through the door, and it feels familiar.

Castle takes the shoes right from her fingers, and then disappears down the hall towards their bedroom to put them away. These little things he does for her, for them; sometimes, she's astonished.

"Go on into the kitchen," he calls over his shoulder. "Wassail should be ready."

Kate pads barefoot towards the kitchen, inhaling the scent of glazed ham and the big pot of mulled cider, the sharp tang of lemon juice, the baking smells that permeate the air. Castle comes back from the bedroom, rubbing his hands together.

"Castle, you've done so much."

"I promise I left things for you. There's still the potatoes and the asparagus. And-"

"Perfect," she says, turning to search for the bag of potatoes in the crisper.

"Wait, hang on," he laughs, moving to push the fridge door closed. "Eager. We've got hours yet. Dinner had to be pushed back an hour for my mother. Alexis is upstairs with Paige; they're reconnecting. That leaves you and me-" Castle steps into her, sliding his arm around her waist. "A few hours to relax."

She leans into his embrace, twining her arms around him, laying her head at his shoulder. His hand skates up her back and buries in her hair, massaging her neck. Her muscles release despite herself, too much of her weight resting against him.

But he holds her up. She can feel the flex of his thighs as he shifts to balance, the tension in his arms as he encompasses her.

She has butterflies in her stomach. Like this is their first night, like they didn't just get away for the weekend and spend most of their time in bed. Like she's never been touched by him before.

"Want some wassail?" he murmurs at her ear. She can feel the texture in his voice from his chest cold and she rubs his back with both hands. He grumbles something and clears his throat, turning his head as his breath catches on the snags in his lungs.

He suppresses the cough, which must hurt; she can feel the taut concentration across his chest.

She is ridiculously in love with him.

It hasn't swept over her like this in a while. Not since before his accident. When he came back after this summer it was mostly desperation, and that's just sad. At least tonight it's a little more adoration.

"Kate?"

"Yes," she answers, nodding at his shoulder. "Wassail. Oh, you've got the gas logs going, too."

"I think of everything," he boasts, stepping back and releasing her. So proud of himself.

What a sweet boy he must have been. A little mischievous. Sly, knowing just how cute, and how much he could get away with.

Kate reaches out and brushes the hair off his forehead; he's warm but it might just be from working in the kitchen.

"Really," he says, catching her by the wrist and drawing her hand away. "Cough is there, but I feel better than I sound."

"I believe you," she says softly, curling her fingers down to skim the back of his hand. He lets her go and moves for the big pot simmering on the stovetop, mulled cider and baked apples, cranberries, the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg.

She really does believe him.

* * *

When Castle returns from checking on the ham, Kate shifts in the wide armchair before the gas fireplace, opening up space at her side. "Sit with me?"

He glances at the chair where he was sitting before he had to get up, and then he shrugs and moves towards her. She has to actually get up and let him sit first before she can settle in with him. Their hips wedge together and she shifts, feels him pressing hard into her in all kinds of wonderful ways.

"Oof," he grunts. "Tight fit."

"You make a crack about my ass-"

"Yours? _Mine_."

"I really like yours, so that's off limits too," she says, poking him in the chest as she holds her mug aloft to keep it from spilling.

He's got his own mug held away as well, frowning as he squirms back in the seat. "These chairs are not made for two people averaging six foot-"

"You make me sound like a giant."

"You _are_ a giant. It's quite refreshing. No awkward hunching. I don't feel like a mauling bear just kissing you."

Kate laughs, feeling a little helpless with it, bowing her forehead into his chest as that mental image flickers through her mind. His arm is around her, and she's mostly in his lap, but he tilts his chin down into her hair, lips finding her ear.

"You fit me," he murmurs. The burr in his chest makes her skin electric. Alive. She winds her arm around his neck and realizes here they are again with mugs between them.

"You fit me too," she whispers. "Who knew?"

"Me," he says immediately. "I knew. Day one."

"You're incorrigible," she chuckles, their foreheads resting together.

"Yes. Are you just now discovering that?" He clinks their mugs together. "And happy wassailing. Even though it's really in January."

Kate grins and tilts her head, lifts her fingers to trace over his lips. "What are we wassailing, Rick?"

"A good harvest. And since you're the queen, up to you to offer the wassail cup to the health of the trees."

"Is that how the tradition goes?"

"It is," he says. Somehow his eyes are the blue of snowfall, this close. The fire is making lovely crackling noises and beaming heat at them, and her toes have finally thawed. He slides his hand under the tail of her shirt and inches warm fingers up her bare back.

"What do I have to do?" she murmurs.

"Sing to awaken the trees. Drink to scare off the evil spirits. Then climb the biggest tree - that's the one that supposedly houses the orchard's fertility - and offer the wassail-soaked toast for the orchard's coming year, the hopes of a good harvest."

Kate bumps her knee into his lap, gives him an arch look.

His cheeks go bright red. "Kate Beckett. Why, I _never_."

"I'm not the one talking about climbing wood," she hums, stroking his jaw with the backs of her fingers. "And fertility."

He chuckles, his own fingers tracing designs on her skin at her ribs, following their lines. His eyes are pressed into creases at the corners, his happiness a thing she could taste.

"Rick?"

"No, Beckett, we have like ten minutes and that is _not _enough time for the things I want to do to you."

She laughs, but her breath is caught, tripping in her chest; she has to hold herself away from the tempting lure of his mouth.

"That's not what I was going to say," she gets out, taking a breath.

"What were you going to say?"

She runs her hand to his neck, the rough abrasion of his scruff and the warm skin at his nape where the silky hair is exactly what she craves to feel in the middle of the day during the worst cases.

"Kate?"

"Castle. I don't know if you know this, but-" She leans in and touches her forehead to his neck, her words spoken into the warmth of his skin. "I have a major crush on you."

* * *

Dinner is eaten in a rush, despite the effort they've both put into it. _Gifts_. Kate thinks maybe they're all a little nervous and excited. This year feels different.

Her father is here, and Kate can see how Alexis is eyeing the presents her father brought, all stacked on the floor to one side of the tree. There is a gift in that stack for Alexis, and Kate can see how it's bewildered the girl.

When Kate called her father and invited him for Christmas Eve, she warned him, _this is their tradition, everything, Dad; this is how the Castles celebrate Christmas._ And he assured her, _I'm up for this; you'll see. We're all family now._

He never said that before Castle went missing this summer.

Dinner goes fast. They're congregating in the living room in front of the tree before she realizes it's that time. At first, Alexis plays elf, passing out presents not marked from Santa, but of course Castle gets in on it, too eager, smiling brightly at every gift he presses into her hands.

"Too many," she protests, but even _she_ can hear how weak it sounds. And then on the next round, "Castle, I shouldn't be getting more than your daughter," she hisses.

His answer is a kiss between her eyes and back to the tree.

They open presents all at once, in a gleeful burst of activity. Kate's family always went in a circle, one by one, waiting turns, being appreciative for the things other people got. Even in gifts, the Castles are different.

Kate got him the usual assortment of things: the gloves that match the scarf from Hampton Bays, those cufflinks he admired for so long but never picked up, the handful of books she thinks he might like, sweater and a shirt she wanted to see him in, and finally, a better, more-complicated radio-controlled helicopter after he never replaced the one he crashed.

He's gotten her the same handful of beautiful things, though more books, the whole Egan collection, which amuses her. And the soundtrack from the _Les Mis_ Broadway show, which makes her heart go a little soft for him. Martha found the old playbill from the 1995 production, and she managed to get all the leads to sign it; she's presented it to Kate already framed.

Alexis gets a lot of books, a few pieces of simple jewelry, gift cards. Martha isn't much different, and the ease with which Kate's choices for them are accepted and genuinely appreciated are encouraging if only for how unremarkable it all is. No one really made a list this year, and Kate knows it's because they all still feel that Castle's return is the biggest gift they might have asked for.

But it's what her father has brought for Castle that outshines the rest. When Rick claws through the paper and snaps the tape on the shirt box, his attention is half on the gift and half on Alexis opening one of her own presents. Until the gift in his lap catches his eye.

Kate sees his hands go still, his eyes fixed on the box in his lap. Kate rises from her seat on the couch to perch on the chair beside him, her hand on his shoulder as she looks on.

Only to be struck silent.

"Jim," Castle gets out.

"They were her mother's. Johanna's." Her father bobs his head, but he's smiling softly.

"She read my books?" A rattling noise in his lungs as Castle looks up at her. "Kate?"

"Did I never tell you...?"

"I think I'd have remembered that," he gruffs. Kate squeezes his shoulder in silent apology.

But he reverently takes the three books from the tissue paper, cradles them in his hands. Kate reaches past him for one of the paperbacks and lifts it to her nose, fanning the pages.

"Smells like her," she sighs.

"Oh, no, I can't take-"

"Sure you can," her father says easily. "In some ways, you could say she's the reason we're here together. And yet - Rick - so are you. Those books prove it. Not just about - about her death, you know? Started with the words you wrote."

* * *

Kate clutches the playbill to her chest and then lays it down on her night stand beside the bed. Martha went to a lot of trouble collecting those signatures, and she's a little ashamed that their parents have been the ones to outdo them this Christmas.

From the kitchen, she can hear Castle and his mother plating desserts, that teasing jab of their back and forth over the sound of the coffeemaker, so Kate moves to head back for the living room and the wreckage of wrapping paper.

But before she steps out of the office, she hears her father speaking and then Alexis's quick reply.

"You didn't have to get me anything," the girl is saying. "I didn't get you-"

"I'd say letting me in on your family Christmas is a pretty big gift."

"Still. I'm sorry that it didn't even occur to me," Alexis says. Her voice sounds strained. "This is a great gift. My dad didn't even - I know he _heard_ me talking about how I wanted to change majors, but he never even asked about it. How did you know?"

"Kate said you'd been talking about Biochemistry - a study group? And I have a friend who teaches as the college, so I asked him for something introductory."

"This is perfect," Alexis sighs. Kate sinks back in the shadows, sits down in the chair in Castle's office, unashamed in her listening. She's surprised Alexis wants to change majors, but has Castle really said nothing to the girl? In Kate's absorption, she's missed the next exchange, but her father is talking again.

"Step-granddaughter, I guess. Though that seems odd."

Alexis is giggling. "It really does. But - yeah - I've been calling Kate my step-mom, like when I say something to a friend." She _has_? "That would make you my step-grandfather. I never had a grandfather, so that's kinda cool."

This is too weird.

"Then it's a deal. I guess I need a name or something? Step-grandfather is too much."

Kate jerks to her feet but Alexis makes a little noise and says, "No, no. That's - shouldn't they - I mean, Dad and Kate - their kids will call you something. I'll use that."

"Huh, is that how it works?"

"They'll be your real-"

"No, I don't like that. The two of us can come up with a much better name. What if it takes years? Or worse, what if those kids pick something terrible? Like Boppy."

"_Boppy_?" Alexis squeaks, and then she's laughing, they both are, and Kate realizes she really has to stop eavesdropping. Getting as bad as Castle.

She moves out from the office and catches them red-handed, standing before the Christmas tree, Alexis's arm hooked through Jim's. Kate thinks she ought to say something, she has to say something, but Martha calls out from the kitchen saying dessert is served, and Alexis makes her escape - but not before going up on her toes and kissing Jim on the cheek.

When Alexis is safely away, Kate eyes her father. "Dad-"

"You were listening, you little snoop."

Her cheeks flush, like she's five years old again.

But her dad shakes his head. "I'm serious. I won't be _Boppy_. It's undignified. Let Alexis figure it out. If she even wants to."

"I can't believe you said that to her."

"She's your daughter now too."

What can she say to that? After this summer, they are something all right. They were sisters in grief, but now they're connected in deeper ways inside this comfortable, crazy family.

"Come on, then, Katie. I smell apple cobbler."

Their parents have completely outdone them.


	25. December 25 - It's Christmastime!

_December 25 - It's Christmastime_

* * *

I might kiss you on the back of your neck  
Because it's Christmastime

-Hey Guys! It's Christmastime!, Sufjan Stevens

* * *

Castle has been watching her sleep for as long as he could force himself to be good. But it's Christmas Day and Santa has arrived, and he can't help waking her. Plus she has to go into work, so it's not as bad as it sounds - she would be getting up soon anyway.

He tugs her ear.

Kate murmurs in her sleep and shrugs her shoulder to dislodge him, rolling over in bed. Castle crowds at her back and slides his arm around her waist, nudges his nose into her neck for a little shock and awe.

"Kate," he whispers. His throat is still scratchy from the cold he came down with on Monday, his chest a little achey, but he's not sick any longer. "Kate. Merry Christmas."

She mumbles something into her pillow, her skin so warm with sleep against his nose.

He takes a deep breath, tickling her. "You smell like sugar plums."

Kate grunts and twists in bed, one of her hands hitting his shoulder as she cracks open an eyelid and glares at him. "Sugar plums."

"Merry Christmas, Mrs Castle."

She huffs but goes on the attack, her body pressing to his and flopping him to his back while she slides over. Her mouth is rich and insistent and fierce - and then she's gone, out of bed, heading for the bathroom.

He lies there a moment, a little shock-and-awed himself, and then he gets out of bed and goes to the closet, unhides her gift from between the folded stacks of his sweaters. His heart is fluttering, like he's never given her a gift before.

Castle pushes the box into the pocket of his plaid pajama pants and backs out of the closet. He winds up running into her as she's coming out of the bathroom, one of her hands gripping his arm to keep them from stumbling.

"Castle," she says, a little breathless.

"Hey," he starts. "I have-"

"Here." She pushes an envelope into his hands and he stares down at it, the little jewelry box forgotten in his pocket.

"What's this?" he murmurs, turning it over. She's written _Rick_ in that scrawl of hers. There is something about his name in her hand that he will always recognize, even if the letters themselves look nothing at all like they should.

"Um, you said Santa brings presents on Christmas Day, right? So open it." She disappears then, heading into the closet to pick out her wardrobe.

He eyes her a moment, but she's resolutely not looking back at him, so Castle gets a finger under the flap and tears through the envelope.

Strange. It looks like letters to Santa? One of the sheets of paper is written in a child's pencil, rounded letters - and a photograph that he tugs out first.

"Oh. Kate. Hey-" It's Robert and his boys from Hot Meals. "Kate, where'd you get this?"

Robert and his sons are in front of a white-light-blurred Christmas tree, wrapped gifts in the boys' hands and pulled against their chests like they can't possibly let go. Both boys have teeth-gapped smiles, eyes squeezed shut with joy, chins sticking out in _cheese._ Robert isn't smiling but he looks a lot more at ease than Castle saw him this weekend.

"I've been keeping up with Dan," Kate says quietly.

He glances up and she's all soft-sleep-warm, her hair mussed around her head, biting her bottom lip, a pair of jeans dangling from her fingers.

"Dan," he repeats. "Dan Jordan. What-"

"Just read the letters they wrote, Castle."

His chest is so tight, he's not sure he can. But he opens the child-written letter and sees it's from the older boy.

**x**

_Dear Santa,_

_I have a tree and lights and presents and thank you. I have not been writing you letters so much but if maybe I am on the nicer list, I would like a room for me and Will and Dad and not a car. But Dad needs the car so I mean not to sleep in._

_Your friend,_

_Shawn_

**x**

"Kate," he says, brow furrowing.

She circles her fingers around his wrist and brings the letter down. "Wait," she says. "Keep reading."

He clears his throat and shuffles the pages until he gets to the next one. This is written on a plain white page, monogrammed, someone's stationary. A spidery cursive, like a grandmother.

**x**

_Mr. Castle,_

_I feel I should share with you what happened to me on Monday morning; somehow I think you were responsible. _

_Well, to start, I forgot to get gas this weekend, so I had to fill up before work. When I pulled into the gas station, a man was pushing his beaten-up car to the pump beside mine. Two little boys were inside, the older one doing the steering. _

_I swiped my card at the man's pump before he could do anything. He stared at me and I told him it was Christmastime and he'd do me a favor if he just accepted it - my good deed for the day._

_I went inside the gas station to get a 99cent coffee and came out with a fistful of gas cards, handed them over. He didn't want to take them, but we both knew he ought to. He looked at those gas cards and then he pulled a card out of his back pocket._

_It was yours. He said he'd met you, that you were kind to him, and your promise in that card was all he had to repay me. That you might, at some future date, be able to help me as I had helped him._

_I don't need much help, but I do attend a church where we give hot meals to the homeless, and it occurred to me he might have been there this weekend - and you as well. So I talked to Dan Jordan and he said I should write this letter; he was going to send it on._

_You made a difference for Robert. He's at the church now with his two boys. It was the spark that started this whole chain of events. You should know._

_Sincerely,_

_Margaret Rose Peterson_

**_x_**

Castle shuffles back to the photograph, the somewhat wry look in Robert's eyes, like he can't believe he's there, and the two boys beaming like crazy.

His lungs are tight and it's not his chest cold. "The presents and the tree-?"

"Read the last letter, Rick."

He lets out a shaky breath because he's not sure how this is all going to end, but he has this idea that it's already gutting him out.

**x**

_Rick,_

_Your wife is something else, that's for sure._

**x**

Castle lifts his head, waves the letter at her. "You read these?"

She presses her lips together, a little shrug. He laughs and goes back to the letter from Dan Jordan.

**x**

_She's been on top of this, tracking down gifts for these kids and putting it all together. The money, of course, is amazing - such a boon for us at the church to know our operating budget for Hot Meals will be covered for a while. But the way you two have taken Robert into your thoughts and prayers and hearts and helped him - that's more._

_Robert is at the church now, the two boys are enrolled in the preschool and kindergarten here. He's agreed to a job doing maintenance, and they'll be staying in our transition apartments until they've gotten on their feet. Christmas is going to be a big deal for them this year, and you've made it possible, you and Kate._

_Thanks, Rick, for being a part of this._

_Yours,_

_Dan _

**x**

"Kate. You - did all this?"

"No, Castle," she laughs. "You did. Kind of the point."

He shuffles the pages back to the boy's letter to Santa. "Is there - some way we can get them a house, because-"

"I figured you might say that," she smiles. "I've been talking to Dan and as soon as Robert goes through their job skills training program, he'll let us know what their needs will be. In the meantime, Robert's Christmas gift from 'Santa' is a key."

Castle startles, staring at her, the gift box he wrapped for her suddenly burning in his pocket. "A key?" he squeaks.

"As a kind of promise, a goal to work towards. We'll partner with him in getting a house for those boys... is something wrong? You have a funny look on your face."

"I'm just... it's - I'm... I have something for you. One last gift," he gets out.

And then he tugs the wrapped box from his pocket and hands it to her.

* * *

Kate takes the gift from his hand, her fingers curling around the edges, her eyes not leaving his.

"Just open it," he rasps. "I'll explain."

"Is your cold-?"

He catches the hand she tries to raise to his forehead, and shakes his head, kisses her fingertips. "No. No, I'm not sick. Just a little stunned. Open it."

She looks back down at the box, jewelry, she thinks, and slowly peels open the tape. He's antsy, she can tell even without looking, but he can't rush her. The paper is busy - nutcrackers haphazard in pattern over a red background. She chuckles a little and he makes a noise like a groan.

"I know I said I'd wait for you all over again, but come on. Open it a little faster, Beckett."

She laughs, eyes lifting to his, and goes ahead and rips the paper, lifting the white lid of the box.

It's a _key_. Faintly brassy, worn teeth, and as she dips her hand inside to pick it up, she knows exactly what it is.

The safety deposit box in Montreal - this is the key that held his good-bye video. How he loves her, how he wishes he hadn't missed out on their life together.

"The key?" she croaks. No wonder he was looking at her like that, when she said Robert's Christmas gift is a key. This key is on a dainty gold chain, much like the necklace she wore her mother's ring on.

He takes it and flips it over in her fingers, the chain snaking across her wrist. "Read it," he says softly.

Her fingers clench around the key and she feels the teeth digging into her skin, every impression of the box number against her thumb. But when her fingers release, blanched, she stares down at the key in her palm and sees something entirely different.

It's not the box number staring up at her. A word has been inscribed, engraved, into the metal. One word.

_Joy._

She takes a breath more broken than whole, reels back until her legs hit the mattress, drops down to the bed.

"I had it made."

He's standing before her in those low-slung pajama pants, drawstring untied and dangling, the muscles of his abs interrupted by the scar of a gunshot graze neither of them can explain. She lifts her eyes and sees the tiredness on his face, but unmistakably, joy as well.

"You had this made?"

"The key. It's a giving key. You engrave a word on it, wear it on a chain close to your heart until it - seeps inside you. Fills you. And then you take it off and pass it on to someone who needs it too. I've been wearing it - _joy _around my neck, over my heart, for the last month."

She stares at the key until it blurs. "You've given me joy," she whispers.

"Wasn't to make you cry," he says quietly, stepping close.

She reaches out with her free hand, yanks to pull him down with her.

When he sits, it's so carefully, and his fingers come around her wrist, stroking her skin lightly. "It's amazing to me how you can spread joy to other people, Kate, and never hold on to it for yourself. At this time of year. I wanted to somehow... every day, just a little, give it back to you."

She can barely speak, but she lays her head against his shoulder, gulping a breath.

"The holidays suck for me," she tries. She shakes her head and twirls the key in her fingers, one way, back again. "I just... everything leads up to Christmas for you but for me it's all heading towards death."

She meant to say _her_ death. Her mother's death. But maybe just a general death is more accurate. Because it's not just her mother, it's him now too, and always might have been, the two of them wrapped together. It's morbid, isn't it? - to use Christmas as a vehicle for dwelling on how she almost lost him, how it was such a near thing, how he could still be taken from her if it all comes back on them - the things they don't know.

But being with Castle really has transformed things, and not just this year. "I haven't thought about my mother like that for awhile," she admits. "Not even yesterday. Just her life."

He sucks in a breath that still rattles in his chest. "I hope we've changed things, that every year it gets easier to carry, like a key around your neck rather than a weight."

She lifts her head and wraps her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his so he knows she's not crying. She's not. "You have. You've changed that, Rick. Every day this month - every single day - somehow you seduced me into it, all over again."

"Seduced you?" he laughs, kissing the corner of her eye. "I'll take it."

"Thank you for my Christmas," she murmurs.

"Thank you for _making_ it Christmas," he says back. His mouth touches her cheek. "Not just for me. For all of us."

All the money in the world can't buy something as beautiful, as precious, as this brass key.

* * *

_Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Blessed New Year!_

_May you find the joy of giving - and the joy of becoming more than you thought possible. _

_I hope this story has dwelled with you, living among you, reminding you that you are never alone._

_-Laura_


End file.
